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THE 



Magic of the Middle Ages 



VIKTOR RYDBERG 



Translated from the Swedish 



AUGUST HJALMAK EDGEEN 







W 1879. ^ 



NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1879 









Copyright 1879, 

BY 

Henry Holt & Co 



^ ? u 



CONTESTS. 



PAGE. 

I. The Cosmic Philosophy of the Middle Ages, 

AND ITS HlSTOEICAL DEVELOPMENT .... 1 

II. The Magio of the Church 56 

III. The Magic of the Learned 95 

IY. The Magic of the People and tee Struggle 

of the Church against it 158 



• 



THE COSMIC PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES, 
AND ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

It was the belief of Europe during the 
Middle Ages, that our globe was the centre 
of the universe. 

The earth, itself fixed and immovable, was 
encompassed by ten heavens successively en- 
circling one another, and all of these except 
the highest in constant rotation about their 
centre. 

This highest and immovable heaven, envel- 
oping all the others and constituting the 
boundary between created things and the 
void, infinite space beyond, is the Empyrean, 
the heaven of fire, named also by the Platon- 
izing philosophers the world of archetypes. 
Here "in a light which no one can enter,' 7 
Grod in triune majesty is sitting on his throne, 
while the tones of harmony from the nine 






2 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

revolving heavens beneath ascend to him, 
like a hymn of glory from the universe 
to its Creator. 

Next in order below the Empyrean is the 
heaven of crystal, or the sphere of the first 
movable (primum mobile). Beneath this re- 
volves the heaven of fixed stars, which, formed 
from the most subtile elements in the uni- 
verse, are devoid of weight. If now an angel 
were imagined to descend from this heaven 
straight to earth, — the centre, where the 
coarsest particles of creation are collected, — ■ 
he would still sink through seven vaulted 
spaces, which form the planetary world. In 
the first of these remaining heavens is found 
the planet Saturn, in the second Jupiter, 
in the third Mars; to the fourth and middle 
heaven belongs the Sun, queen of the planets, 
while in the remaining three are the paths 
of Venus, Mercury, and finally the moon, 
measuring time with its waning and increas- 
ing disk. Beneath this heaven of the moon 
is the enveloping atmosphere of the earth, 
and earth itself with its lands and seas. 



MEDIEVAL COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. 3 

There are four prime elements in the struct- 
ure of the universe: fire, air, water and earth. 
Every thing existing in the material world is 
a peculiar compound of these elements, and 
possesses as such an energy of its own; but 
matter in itself is devoid of quality and force. 
All power is spiritual, and flows from a spir- 
itual source, — from God, and is communicated 
to the earth and the heavens above the earth 
and all things in them, by spiritual agents, 
personal but bodiless. These beings fill the 
universe. Even the prime elements derive 
their energy from them. They are called in- 
telligences or angels; and the primum mobile 
as well as the heaven of fixed stars is held 
in motion by % them. The planets are guided 
in their orbits by angels. "All the energies 
of plants, metals, stones and all other objects, 
are derived from those intelligences whom 
God has ordained to be the guardians and 
leaders of his works."* u God, as the source 
and end of all power, lends the seal of ideas 

* Henri cus Cornelius Agrippa ab Nettesheiin : "De occulta 
Philosophia." — I., xm. 



4 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

to his ministering spirits, who, faithfully exe- 
cuting his divine will, stamp with a vital en- 
ergy all things committed to their care."* 

No inevitable causation is admitted. Every 
thing is produced by the will of God, and 
upheld by it. The laws of nature are noth- 
ing but the precepts in accordance with which 
the angels execute their charge. They obey 
from love and fear; but should they in a re- 
fractory spirit transgress the given command- 
ments, or cease their activity, which they 
have the power to do, then the order of na- 
ture would be changed, and the great mech- 
anism of the universe fall asunder, unless God 
saw fit to interpose. "Sometimes God sus- 
pends their agency, and is himself the imme- 
diate actor everywhere; or he gives unusual 
commandments to his angels, and then their 
operations are called miracles. 7 ' f 

A knowledge of the nature of things is 
consequently in the main a knowledge of the 

* Henri cus Cornelius Agrippa ab Nettesheim : 'De occulta 
Philosophia."— I., xin. 
t Ibidem, 



MEDIAEVAL COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. 5 

angels. Their innumerable hosts form nine 
choirs or orders, divided into three hierar- 
chies, corresponding to the three worlds : the 
empyreal, that of the revolving heavens, and 
the terrestrial. The orders of Seraphim, Cher- 
ubim and Thrones which constitute the first 
hierarchy, are nearest God. They surround 
his throne like a train of attendants, re- 
joice in the light of his countenance, feel the 
abundant inspiration of his wisdom, love and 
power, and chant eternal praises to his glory. 
The order of the Thrones, which is the lowest 
in this empyreal hierarchy, proclaims God's 
will to the middle hierarchy, to which is given 
the rule of the movable heavens. It is the 
order of Dominion which thus receives the 
commands of God ; that of Power, which 
guides the stars and planets in their orbits, 
and brings to pass all other celestial phenom- 
ena, carries them into execution, while a 
third of Empire wards off every thing which 
could interfere with their accomplishment. 
The third and lowest hierarchy, embracing the 
orders of Principalities, Archangels and An- 



6 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

gels, holds supremacy over terrestrial things. 
Principalities, as the name implies, are the 
guardian spirits of nations and kingdoms ; 
Archangels protect religion, and bear the 
prayers of saints on high to the throne of 
God; Angels, finally, have the care of every 
mortal, and impart to beasts, plants, stones 
and metals their peculiar nature. Together 
these hierarchies and orders form a continu- 
ous chain of intermingling activities, and thus 
the structure of the universe resembles a Ja- 
cob's ladder, upon which 



Celestial powers, mounting and descending, 
Their golden buckets ceaseless interchange." 



All terrestrial things are images of the ce 
lestial; and all celestial have their archetypes 
in the Empyrean. Things on earth are com- 
posed of the coarsest of all matter ; things 
in the surrounding heavens of a finer sub- 
stance, accessible to the influence of intel- 
ligences. Archetypes are immaterial; and as 
such may be filled without resistance with 
spiritual forces, and give of their plenitude to 



MEDIAEVAL COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. 7 

their corresponding effigies in the worlds of 
stars and planets. These again through their 
rays send, forth of the abundance of their 
power to those objects on earth by which 
they are represented. Every thing on earth 
is consequently not only under the guidance 
of its own angel, but also under the influence 
of stars, planets, and archetypes. The uni- 
verse is a vast lyre whose strings, struck no 
matter where, are sure to vibrate throughout 
their length. 

It was for man that God called forth the 
four elements from nothing by his fiat, and it 
was for man that he fashioned this wonderful 
earth from those elements in six days. Man 
is the crown of creation, its master-piece, and 
within the narrow limits of his nature an epit- 
ome of all things existing, — a microcosm, and 
the image of the supreme God himself. 

But since man, as a microcosm, must par- 
take also of the coarsest matter, his dwell- 
ing-place could not be within the Empyrean, 
but must be fixed on earth. In order that 
it might be worthy to receive him, it was 



8 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

adorned with all the beauty of a paradise, 
and angels gazed from heaven with delight 
upon its vales and mountains, its lakes and 
groves, which in changing lights and shadows 
shone now with the purple of morning, now 
with the gold of the sun, and again with the 
silver of the moon. And this, place of hab- 
itation explains symbolically by its very posi- 
tion the destiny of man and his place in the 
kingdom of Grod; for wherever he wanders, 
the zenith still lingers over his head, and all 
the revolving heavens have his habitation for 
their centre. The dance of the stars is but a 
fete in honor of him, the sun and moon exist 
but to shine upon his pathway and fill his 
heart with gladness. 

The first human beings lived in this their 
paradise in a state of highest happiness. Their 
will was undepraved; their understanding filled 
with the immediate light of intuition. Often 
when the angel of the sun sank with his 
gleaming orb towards the horizon and "day 
was growing cool, 77 God himself descended 
from his Empyrean to wander under the love- 



MEDIAlVAL cosmic philosophy. 9 

ly trees of paradise, in the company of his 
favored ones. 

The world was an unbroken harmony. 
There was, to be sure, a contrast between 
spirit and matter, but as yet none between 
good and evil. It was not long to remain 
thus. 

Lucifer, that is the Light-bringer, or Morn- 
ing Star, was the highest of all angels, the 
prince of seraphim, the favorite of the Cre- 
ator, and in purity, majesty and power in- 
ferior only to the Holy Trinity. Pride and 
envy took possession, it is not known how, 
of this mighty spirit. He conceived the plan 
of overthrowing the power of God, and seat- 
ing himself upon the throne of Omnipotence. 
Angels of all orders were won over to his 
treason. At the first beck of the reckless 
spirit numberless intelligences from the lower 
heavens and from earth assailed the Empy- 
rean and joined themselves to the rebellious 
seraphim, cherubim and thrones who had 
flocked to the standard of revolt. In heaven 
raged a mighty contest, the vicissitudes of 



10 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

which are covered by the veil of mystery. 
St. John, however, in his Book of Revela- 
tion, lifts a single fold of it, and shows us 
Michael at the head of the legions of God 
battling against Lucifer. The contest ended 
with the overthrow of the rebel and his fol- 
lowers. The beautiful Morning Star fell from 
heaven.* Christ beheld the once faithful ser- 
aph hurled from its ramparts like a thunder- 
bolt from the clouds. f 

The conquered was not annihilated. Calm 
in the consciousness of omnipotence, God in- 
scrutably determined that Lucifer, changed 
by his rebellion into a spirit wholly evil, 
should enjoy liberty of action within certain 
limits. The activity of the fallen spirit con- 
sists in desperate and incessant warfare against 
God; and he gains in the beginning a victo- 
ry of immeasurable consequence. He tempts 
man, and brings him under his dominion. 

* This passage, directed against the ruler of Assyria, was al- 
ready interpreted by the early fathers as having reference to 
Satan. Thus Lucifer, the Latin translation for Morning Star, 
came to be a name for the prince of darkness. 

t Luke x. 18. 



MEDIAEVAL COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. 11 

Humanity, as well as the beautiful earth 
which is its abode, is under the curse of 
God. 

The world is no longer an unbroken har- 
mony, a moral unity. It is divided forever 
into two antagonistic kingdoms, those of Good 
and Evil. That God so wills, and permits 
the inevitable consequences, is confirmed by 
an immediate change in the structure of the 
universe. Death is sent forth commissioned 
to destroy all life. Hell opens its jaws in 
the once peaceful realms of earth's bosom, 
and is filled with a fire which burns every 
thing, but consumes nothing. 

The battle-field is the whole creation ex- 
cept the spaces of the Empyrean; for into its 
pure domain nothing corrupt can enter. Lu- 
cifer still adheres to his claims upon its throne, 
and in every thing seeks to imitate God. The 
fallen seraphim, cherubim and thrones consti- 
tute his princely retinue and his council of 
war. The rebel intelligences of the middle 
hierarchy, now transformed into demons, still 
love to rove among the same stars and plan- 



12 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

ets which were once confided to their care, 
and war against the good angels who now 
guide the movements of the heavens. Other 
demons float upon the atmosphere, causing 
storm and thunder, hail and snow, drouth 
and awful omens (whence it is said the devil 
is a prince who controls the weather). Others 
again fill the earth; its seas, lakes, fountains 
and rivers; its woods, groves, meadows and 
mountains. They pervade the elements; they 
are everywhere. 

Man, the chief occasion of the strife, is in 
a sad condition. The bodily pains and suf- 
ferings which the earth since its curse heaps 
upon the path that successive generations, 
all partakers of Adam's sin, must tread, are 
as nothing compared with the perils which 
on all sides assail and threaten their im- 
mortal souls. And how can these dangers 
be averted ? Each mortal is indeed followed 
from his birth by a guardian angel; but how 
can his promptings be distinguished from those 
that issue from the thousand hidden agents of 
the Evil. Lucifer can transform himself into 



MEDIEVAL COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. 13 

an angel of light, his demons can entice with 
a voice which counterfeits that of God and 
conscience. Man's will has no power to re- 
sist these temptations; it is depraved by the 
fall. Reason gives no guidance; darkened on 
account of man's apostasy, it degenerates, if 
left to itself, into a Satanic instrument of 
heresy and error. Feeling is in subjection to 
matter, which, already from the beginning 
opposed to spirit, shares the curse. Is it 
then to be wondered at that the career of 
man, beginning with conception in a sinful 
womb, has for its end, behind the portals of 
death, the eternal torments of a hell? All 
these myriads of souls created by God and 
clothed in garments of clay, — all these mi- 
crocosms, each of which is a master-piece, the 
glory of creation, a being of infinite value, 
form, link by link, a chain extending from 
that nothingness out of which God has cre- 
ated them, to that abyss in which, after a 
brief life on earth, they must be tormented 
through countless ages, despairing and curs- 
ing their Creator. 



14 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

Lucifer triumphs. His kingdom increases; 
but the poor mortal has no right to complain. 
The vessel must not blame the potter. When 
man looks into his own heart he discovers a 
sinfulness and depravity as infinite as are his 
punishments. However severe the law of the 
universe appears, it still bears the impress of 
divine justice. 

It is, therefore, but an act of pure grace, 
when God determines the salvation of man- 
kind. The Church, prepared for by the elec- 
tion of the Jewish people, and founded by 
Jesus Christ the Son of God, who offered 
himself for crucifixion to atone for the sins 
of men, has grown up and disseminated its 
influences throughout regions where once de- 
mons, the gods of the heathen, possessed 
temples, idols and altars. The Church is the 
magic circle within which alone is salvation 
possible {Extra ecclesiam nullus solus). With- 
in her walls the Son of God offers himself 
daily as a sacrifice for the transgressions of 
humanity; the Communion wine is by a mir- 
acle changed into his blood, and the bread 



MEDIAEVAL COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. 15 

into his flesh, which, eaten by the members 
of the Church, promote their growth in holi- 
ness and their power of resistance to the 
Tempter. The Church is one body, anima- 
ted by the Holy Spirit of God; and thus one 
member compensated by surplus of virtue 
for the deficiencies of another. Holy men, 
resigning all sensual delights, and devoting 
their lives to the practice of penance and se- 
verities, the contemplation of spiritual things, 
and doing good, accumulate thereby a wealth 
of supererogatory works, which, deposited in 
the treasury of the Church, enables her to 
compound for the sins of less self-denying 
members. With liberal hand she grants re- 
mission of sins not to the living merely, but 
also to the dead. Thus the race of men may 
breathe more freely, and the multitude attach 
themselves again to the transient joys and 
pleasures of a wretched life on earth; and 
when a mortal plucks the flowers of pleasure 
which bloom in this vale of sorrows, he need 
not fear so much its hidden poison, for the 
remedy is near at hand. The knight in the 



16 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

castle yonder on the summit of the crag, or 
the burgher beneath him in the valley, may 
without scruple take a wife, rear children and 
live in conviviality according to his means; 
the happy student may sing and realize his 
" Oaudeamus igitur") the undaunted soldier 
may seek a recompense for the hardships of 
his campaign by a merry life in taverns and 
in women's company; even the followers of 
Mary Magdalene, sinning in expectation of 
grace, may obtain at the feet of the Church 
the same absolution which was given to their 
model at the feet of Jesus, provided only 
that, grateful for the mercy of Christ, who 
has made them members of his Church, they 
venerate it as their mother, partake of its 
sacraments, and seek its aid. The continu- 
ally increasing number of cloisters, the homes 
of rigorous self-denial, uninterrupted penance, 
and mysterious contemplation, is a guarantee 
of the inexhaustibleness of those works of 
supererogation which the Church possesses. 
In these cloisters young maidens, who have 
consecrated themselves to Christ after a spirit- 



MEDIAL VAL COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. 17 

ual embrace for which the most intense im- 
pulses of their nature have been suppressed, 
yearn away their lives. Here in prayer and 
toil the pious recluse spends his days and 
nights. Those men also who, going forth 
barefooted, covered with coarse mantles, and 
wearing ropes about their waists, devote 
themselves like the apostles to poverty and 
the preaching of the gospel, who receive char- 
ity at the door of the layman, giving him in 
exchange the food of the word of God, — 
these all issue from the same cloisters. 

Thus is the Church a mole against the tide 
of Sin. The Christian has some reason to ex- 
claim: " hell, where is thy victory? " for al- 
though the place of torment is continually 
filled with lost spirits, there are thousands 
upon thousands of ransomed souls that wing 
their flight to the Empyrean, — whether im- 
mediately or by the way of Purgatory. First 
among the beatified who mingling with an- 
gels surround the throne of God, are those 
called saints. Their intercession is more effi- 
cacious even than that of seraphim, and their 



18 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

power in the contest against the demons sur- 
passes that of cherubim. Therefore king- 
doms, communities, orders, corporations and 
guilds, yea, even lawless and disreputable 
professions (so needing grace and interces- 
sion more than others) have their patron 
saints. The individual finally is protected by 
the saint in whose name he has been baptized. 
The Church is the kingdom of God on 
earth; her ecclesiastical hierarchy is an im- 
age of the heavenly; her highest ruler, the 
Pope, is God's vicar. Her destiny, which is 
extension over the whole earth so as to include 
all lands and nations within her magic circle, 
could not be realized unless she possessed 
the power to command the kings and armies 
of Christendom. It is evident, moreover, that 
spiritual power is above secular: the former 
protects the soul, the latter the body only. 
They stand related to one another as spirit is 
related to matter. Therefore it must be the 
Pope who shall invest with the highest secu- 
lar dignity, — that of the Roman Ca3sars. He 
is the feudal lord of the emperors, as the em- 



MEDIAEVAL COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. 19 

peror is, or should be, of the kings, dukes 
and free cities. Were it not thus, — if the 
various rulers were independent of the guar- 
dians of religion, — then woe to the great 
mass of their subjects ! To be sure these 
multitudes are placed on earth to be disci- 
plined by humanity and obedience; they have 
indeed no rights upon which they may insist, 
since they stand outside the pale of freedom; 
but, on the other hand, the oppression exer- 
cised upon them would have no limit unless 
the Church, who is the common mother of 
all, reminded those in authority of their duty 
to love and cherish the lowly: indeed, all so- 
cial order would crumble into dust, did not a 
higher power than that dependent upon the 
sword compel the stronger to fulfil those vows 
to protect the weaker which he made in the 
presence of the Holy Trinity. For the only 
existing rights are those of privilege and 
investiture, founded absolutely upon sealed 
stipulations. 

According to the doctrines of the Church, 
which are the only key to salvation, man 



20 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

has received as a gift what he never could 
have attained by science, — a knowledge of 
the highest truths. Possessed of this knowl- 
edge he must no longer allow himself to be 
tempted by the devil to engage in efforts to 
penetrate the mysteries of the universe with 
nothing to aid him but his darkened intellect; 
for such attempts generally end in error and 
apostasy. Still the allurement is strong be- 
cause the highest truths, when clothed in 
the garb of human conceptions, sometimes 
appear self-contradictory and absurd. They 
must therefore be submitted, not to the de- 
cisions of reason, but the arbitration of faith. 
Faith alone is able to penetrate and appre- 
hend them. The doctrines which the Church, 
assisted by the Holy Spirit, promulgates, 
since they alone are true, offer to the believ- 
ing investigator a mine of infinite treasures. 
There is consequently possible within the 
Church a system of philosophy, provided that 
its processes, always postulating the infalli- 
bility of the dogmas, be confined to devout 
analysis and humble contemplation of relig- 



MEDIEVAL COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. 21 

ious tenets. For such a purpose the adhe- 
rent of the scholastic philosophy may employ 
the Aristotelian dialectics as he chooses, and 
wield the lever of syllogism at his pleasure. 
Even within the pale of orthodoxy there 
may arise many an if and hut, many a pro 
and contra. The scholastic reasoner has to 
prove but the most probable ; the infallible 
Pope and his synods sanction the true de- 
ductions and refute the errors which, when 
recanted, are forgiven. It is best for the in- 
quirer to found his researches on the prop- 
ositions laid down by the early fathers of 
the Church; for thus succeeding generations 
will build on foundations laid for them by 
their predecessors long before. Inasmuch as 
they all follow the same dialectic method of 
analysis and synthesis, so that the whole sub- 
ject is pervaded and its masses grouped into 
architectural order by these processes, there 
is reared on the basis of the dogma a philo- 
sophical superstructure, resembling those cu- 
polas with which the skilful masters of ma- 
sonry amaze our eyes. 



22 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

The world grows worse. The Church can 
pardon sin, but can not hinder its increase. 
Every generation inherits from the preceding 
a burden of evil dispositions, habits and ex- 
amples, which it lays in its turn still heavier 
on the shoulders of posterity. Every son 
has better reason for sighing than his father. 
"Happy those who died ere beholding the 
light of day ! who tasted death ere the ex- 
perience of life ! " * The hosts of Satan assail 
the Church on every side. From his tower 
the watchman of Zion looks out over the 
world, and beholds the billows of history, 
now lashed fiercely by the demons, roll 
against the rock upon which Christ has 
built his temple. With great difficulty the 
cross-adorned hosts of Europe repel the in- 
vasion of the Saracens, whose coming has 
been prefigured by pestilences and portents. 
The emblem of the Church is an ark tossed 
about on a stormy sea amid a tempest of 

* "De Contemptu Mundi sive de Miseria Humanae Condi- 
tionis," a little book written about 1200, by the afterwards 
Pope Innocent III. 



MEDIAEVAL COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. 23 

rain and lightning. History is a spiritual 
comedy, enacted on a stage of which the 
broad foreground, like that of the myste- 
ries, is a theatrum diaholorum; while in the 
narrow background the Church of G-ocl, like 
a beleaguered citadel, points its pinnacles 
above the turmoil towards the gloomy sky, 
from which its defenders expect Jesus and 
his angels to come to their relief. 

But before this relief arrives, iniquity shall 
have reached its height. It is at work already 
within the sacred precincts of the Church it- 
self. It is with greater difficulty that God's 
vicar subdues the inner than the outer ene- 
mies. On the one hand many a man believes 
that he has found in his own reason and con- 
science leading truths, which he arrays, with- 
out any authority outside of himself, against 
those commandments which have come from 
above, and the divine origin of which is con- 
firmed by the faith of a hundred generations. 
He places himself in an attitude of opposition 
to the common faith. Thus originate the her- 
esies, — those cancers on the boclv of the con- 



24 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

gregation which must be cured by the iron, 
when salves will not restore, and by fire when 
the iron is ineffective. On the other hand 
men are so overpowered by their passions 
that they abandon the God who rebukes them, 
and become the bondsmen of another god who 
shows them favor. Pride, fettered by obscure 
descent, and keen appetite for pleasure chained 
from gratification by penury and privation, 
shake their shackles in despair, and finally 
call the Morning Star of old to their assist- 
ance. The archfiend promises pleasures with- 
out stint, and power without limitation. The 
poor mortal for dread of the pains which af- 
flict his body is urged on to his destruction. 
His body, formed from the dust of the accursed 
earth, and always a centre of sensual desires, 
is abandoned by God a prey to the assaults 
of the devil. "Here somebody loses an eye, 
somebody there a hand; one falls into the fire 
and is burned to death, one into the water 
and is drowned; another climbs a ladder and 
breaks his neck, another again stumbles on 
the even ground and breaks a leg. All such 



MEDIAEVAL COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. 25 

unforeseen accidents, occurring daily, are but 
the devil's thumps and strokes which he inflicts 
upon us from sheerest malice.'""'" Still more: 
the demon is able to take possession so thor- 
oughly of the human body that he becomes, 
as it were, its second soul, moves its limbs, 
utters blasphemies with its tongue at which 
even their fiendish author can not but tremble. 
But though the God-fearing man, like pious 
Job, is benefited by such afflictions, and al- 
though prayer is a powerful refuge, still there 
is a continually growing number of those who, 
driven by cowardly dread of the might of the 
Prince of Evil, seek their safety in a league 
with him; so much the more as he lends them 
a partial control of the elements, and thus a 
means of employment and of doing harm to 
others. Thus the dire pestilence of sorcery 
multiplies its victims; and in the black hours 
of midnight hundreds of thousands who bear 
the name of Christian, on mountains and in 



* The words of Luther, who, in addition to his dualistic 
belief, was a genuine son of this same Middle Age, though 
the destroyer of its autocratic faith. 



2G THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

deserts perform clandestine rites in honor of 
their Satanic master. Time ripens for the 
advent of Antichrist, for the Day of Judgment 
and the final conflagration. 

In the flames of this last day the revolving 
heavens and the earth are destroyed. Mo- 
tion, activity, strife, history, — all are at an 
end. The Empyrean and Hell alone remain, 
as the antipodal extremes of the former uni- 
verse. This conflagration is not a universal 
purifier, annihilating what has no existence 
in itself.* It only separates forever the gold 



* As such, — as perishable and unreal, are all evil things re- 
garded by an unknown author in the Middle Ages. In his 
beautiful opuscule "Deutsche Theologie," he says among other 
things: "Now some one may ask, 'Since we must love every 
thing, must we also love sin? ' The answer is, no; for when we 
say every thing, we only mean every thing that is good. Every 
thing that exists is good by virtue of its existence. The devil 
is good in so far as he exists. In this sense, there is nothing 
evil in existence. But it is a sin to wish, desire or love any thing 
else than God. Now all things are essentially in God, and more 
essentially in God than in themselves; therefore are they all 
good in their real essence." — The little work from which the 
above is quoted, is the expression of a deep and pious soul, 
struggling to master the dualism which fettered his age. It is 
remarkable that Luther was not more strongly influenced by its 



MEDIAEVAL COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. 27 

from the dross. The kingdom of the devil 
continues to exist, and its prey is its own for 
evermore. But it exists thus only because an 
eternal existence means an eternal punish- 
ment for its ruler as well as for his subjects. 
From the new heavens and the new earth 
which the fiat of God has created to be the 
dwelling-place of those who have escaped de- 
struction, these ransomed spirits perceive the 
gnashing of teeth and lamentation of their 
doomed brethren, and look down upon their 
tortures and misery, not with compassion but 
with joy, because they recognize in their pun- 
ishment the vindication of divine justice; not 
with pain but delight, because the sight of 
their wretchedness doubles their own felicity. 
From the depths of that gulf of misery ascend 
without ceasing, to the Empyrean, cries of de- 
spair, blasphemies of defiance, and curses of 
rage, yet do they not disturb the hymns which 
saints and angels sing ever around the throne 

spirit, although he confesses that "Next to the Bible and St. 
Augustine I have found no book from which I have learned 
more." 



28 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

of God and of the Lamb; they only intensify 
the solemnity of the worship.* 



Such in its chief features was the cosmic 
philosophy of the Middle Ages; not abstractly 
considered, but such as existed in reality dur- 
ing many centuries among Christian people, 
guiding their thoughts, imagination and feel- 
ings, and governing their actions. Remains 
of it are still apparent in the systems of ex- 
isting sects, though incompatible with the 
new philosophy which the human mind has 

* See the work "Summa Theologica" (supplementum ad ter- 
tiam partem, quasst. 94) by the most prominent and most in- 
fluential among the theologians of the Middle Ages, Thomas 
Aquinas. It is there said: "Ut beatitudo sanctorum eis ma- 
gis complaceat et de ea uberiores gratias Deo agant, datur eis 
ut poenam impiorum perfecte videant . . Beati, qui erunt 
in gloria, nullam compassionem ad damnatos habebunt. . . 
Sancti de poenis impiorum gaudebunt, considerando in eis di- 
vinae justitiae ordinem et suam liberationem de qua gaudebunt." 
— With this may be compared the following execrable effusion 
of another theologian: "Beati coalites non tantum non cogna- 
torum sed nee parentum sempiternis suppliciis ad ullam miser- 
ationem flectentur. Imo vero laetabuntur justi, cum viderint 
vindictam; manus lavabunt in sanguine peccatorum." 



ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. 29 

been laboring to unfold. Ever since the in- 
tellect of Christendom began to free itself in 
the sixteenth century from faith by author- 
ity, the influence of the old views upon the 
various forms which life takes on, has been 
gradually declining. 

Many of those characteristics which so 
strangely contrast the state of society in the 
Middle Ages with the preceding Hellenic and 
the subsequent modern European civiliza- 
tions, have their origin in different theories 
of the universe. It is not mere chance that 
we encounter, on the one hand, in the his- 
tory of Greece, so many harmonious forms 
with repose and tranquil joy depicted in 
every lineament of their countenance, and 
on the other, in that of the Middle Ages, so 
many beings buried in deepest gloom or ex- 
alted in frenzied rapture, dripping with blood 
from self-inflicted wounds, or glowing with 
the fever of mystic emotion — not a mere 
chance that the former age loves those se- 
rene forms and immortalizes them in its he- 
roic galleries, while the latter worships its 



30 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

eccentric figures and describes them in its 
legends as saintly models. It is not a mere 
accident that the art of Greece mirrors a 
beautiful humanity, while that of the Middle 
Ages loves to dwell upon monstrosities and 
throws itself between the extremes of awful 
earnestness and wild burlesque; not an acci- 
dent only that the science of the Greek is 
rational — that he discovers the categories in 
Logic, and rears a most perfect structure of 
rigid demonstration in his Geometry, while 
the science of the Middle Ages on the con- 
trary is magic, — is a doctrine of correspond- 
encies, Astrology, Alchemy, and Sorcery. 

To the Greek the universe was a harmo- 
nious unity. The law of reason, veiled under 
the name of fate, ruled the gods themselves. 
The variegated events of the myth lay far 
away in the distance; they did not even warp 
the imagination of the poet, when he occu- 
pied himself with them; still less the faith of 
the multitude, and least of all the investi- 
gations of the thinker. The uninterrupted 
sequence of events invited to contemplation, 



ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. 31 

which could be indulged in the more readily, 
as no one pretended to have received as a 
gift a complete system of revealed truth, and 
the more freely, as no authority forced the 
individual to choose between such a system 
and perdition. In general no doubt was en- 
tertained concerning the ability of Reason to 
penetrate to the inner essence of things, since 
no knowledge of the fall of man, which an- 
nihilated this ability, had reached the Greeks. 
In regard to knowledge the Greek conse- 
quently built on evidence and inner author- 
ity. The same was the case in regard to 
morality. They were convinced that those 
impulses which promoted the happiness of 
domestic life, were good ; and that those 
which did not counteract it were at least 
justified; and thus they enjoyed with moder- 
ation the gifts of nature, without suspicion 
that the bountiful giver was accursed. The 
ideal of wisdom which they had framed, was 
based on their inner experience, whether it 
had the joyous features of Epicurus, the se- 
verer lineaments of Zeno, or the mild and 



32 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

resigned expression of Epictetus; and when 
they exerted themselves to realize it in their 
lives, they always proceeded upon the suppo- 
sition that this would be possible by a daily 
strengthening of the will. The exertion put 
forth by the Greeks to attain to purity and 
virtue was, as it were, a system of gymnas- 
tics for developing the muscles of the brain. 
The same power and self-confidence were dis- 
played in these endeavors as in the palaestra. 
Sighs and anguish were strangers to this kind 
of reformatory effort. Yet was it not alto- 
gether fruitless. The old adage that God 
helps those who help themselves can be here 
applied. That it developed great, powerful, 
and noble natures was so undeniable that 
even one of the Christian fathers, upon con- 
sidering their achievements, began to doubt 
if his way of attaining perfection was really 
the only one, until he succeeded in convinc- 
ing himself that " The virtues of the Gentiles 
are shining vices." The harmonious person- 
ality of the Greek and the rationality of Gre- 
cian science depended on the unity, the har- 



ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. 33 

mony of their cosmic views — upon this, that 
they conceived of the whole as a unity in its 
diversity, not as an irreconcilable disunion 
of two absolutely antagonistic principles. 

If, on the contrary, the highest ruling pow- 
er in nature is an arbitrary divine caprice, if 
the world which lies open before mankind is 
ruled by another's purely fortuitous decrees, 
themselves interfered with continually by hos- 
tile influences from an infernal kingdom; if, 
moreover, this struggle rages not merely in 
the external world, but also in the very core 
of human nature, vitiating her reason, feel- 
ings and will, so to employ them without 
her agency as means to her exaltation or 
perdition, then is there indeed no causality 
to be sought for, and consequently no field 
anywhere for scientific investigation. Were 
there even any such thing as science, it would 
lie far beyond the powers of man, since reason, 
a mere plaything for demoniac powers, can 
not be trusted. Neither has his personality 
any longer its centre of gravity within itself. 
Then is man in excessive need of such an in- 

3 






34 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

stitution of deliverance as the Church, which 
teaches him what the divine authority has 
arbitrarily decided to be good or evil; while 
the supernatural means of grace, the sacra- 
ments, afford him power of resisting evil, and 
absolve him from his failings. In this way ex- 
ternal authority supplants the inner, which is 
torn up by the roots. That ideal of human 
perfection which is possible under such con- 
ditions, and which actually arises because the 
native activity of the mind constantly en- 
deavors to bring all accepted notions into 
union, places itself on the doctrine of author- 
ity as its foundation, and accepts its super- 
natural character. That the ideal of the Mid- 
dle Ages is ascetic and its science magical, is 
directly consequent upon its dualistic concep- 
tion of the universe and of its peculiar nature. 
The dualism of the Middle Ages was de- 
rived from Persia. It is the essential idea 
of the Zoroastrian doctrine, which finally, 
after a long struggle against the unitarian 
notions of the Greeks, penetrates the Occi- 
dent and completely conquers it. This vie- 



. ITS HISTORIC A I DEVELOPMENT. 35 

torious combat of the Orient against Europe 
is the sum of history between Cyrus and 
Constantine. The external events which fill 
those centuries obtain their true significance 
when within and behind them one perceives 
the struggle between the two conflicting sys- 
tems of ideas. Like concealed chess-play- 
ers they move their unconscious champions 
against each other on the board of history. 
When Cyrus sends home the Jewish pris- 
oners from the rivers of Babylon to the 
mountains of Jerusalem, he gains for dual- 
ism that important flank-position on the Med- 
iterranean the significance of which is shown 
centuries after in the progress of the battle. 
The "Adversary" (Satan) who sometimes 
appears' in the most recent portions of the 
Old Testament, written under Persian influ- 
ence, and plays a continually widening role 
in the Rabbinical literature, is the Judaized 
Ahriman; the demoniacs who in the time of 
Christ abounded in Palestine testify that the 
demon-belief of Persian dualism had pene- 
trated into the imagination and feeling of the 



36 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

Jews, and there borne fruit. By the side of 
this peaceful conquest the great war-drama 
between Greece and Persia is enacted. Al- 
though this is not recognizedly a religious 
war, it is nevertheless Ormuzd and Ahriman 
who are repelled at Marathon, Salamis and 
Platsea, it is the Grecian unitarianism which 
is saved in these battles to develop itself, for 
a season undisturbed, into a radiant and beau- 
tiful culture. As has been shown already, 
magic, and belief upon authority, are the nec- 
essary consequences of a dualistic religion; 
the restriction and annihilation of free per- 
sonality are equally necessary consequences 
of belief by authority. Can any one regard- 
ing the conflict which raged on the field of 
Marathon, fail to recognize the clash of two 
spiritual opposites, two different systems of 
ideas, when he sees the bands of Greeks, 
drawn from their agorai (places for political 
discussion) and gymnasiums, advance cheer- 
fully and garlanded, but without depreciating 
the danger, to meet the innumerable hosts of 
the Orient driven on by the scourge of their 



ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT 37 

leaders ? On the one side, a fully developed 
free personality, which has its origin in a har- 
monious conception of nature, on the other, 
blind submission to external force. On the 
one side, liberty, on the other, despotism. 
One may add by the help of a logical 
conclusion, though this may seem more re- 
moved, — on the one side rationality, on the 
other magic. 

Strengthened thus by victory Europe goes 
to seek the enemy in his own country. Alex- 
ander conquers Asia. But the new Achilles 
is fettered in the chains of his own slave. 
For while Greek culture is spreading over 
the surface of the conquered countries, the 
Oriental spirit advances beneath it in a con- 
trary direction. The waves of the two ideal 
currents are partly mingled. In the libraries 
of Alexandria and Pergamus the literatures 
of the Orient and of the Occident flow to- 
gether; in their halls meet the sages of the 
East and West ; in their doctrinal systems 
Zoroaster and Plato, fancy and speculation, 
maoic and rationalism are blended in the 



38 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

most extraordinary way. The victory of 
Alexander was that of the warrior, and not 
that of sober Aristotle's pupil. The Judaico- 
Alexandrian philosophy blooms, and gnosti- 
cism, — that monstrous bastard of specifically 
different cosmical systems, is already begot- 
ten, when Christianity springs up in Palestine, 
and unites itself with the Jewish dualism de- 
rived from Zoroaster, and thus proceeds to 
conquer the world by the weapons of belief. 
In the mean time Rome has extended and 
established its empire. The nationalities in- 
cluded in it have been mingled together ; 
their various gods have been carried into the 
same Pantheon ; and their ideas have been 
brought face to face. The universal empire, 
to maintain its existence, has been forced to 
centralize itself into a despotism of the Orien- 
tal type, the free forms of state have per- 
ished, philosophical skepticism and eudemon- 
ism have abolished among the cultured classes 
the inherited notions of religion. All this, 
with its accompaniments of moral depravity 
and material necessity, have prepared the soil 



ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. 39 

of the Occident for receiving the seed of the 
new religion. Emptiness and misery make 
the difference between ideality and reality, 
between good and evil, all the more percepti- 
ble even to unitarian nations. Dualism thus 
prepared for in the realms of thought and 
feeling, spreads in Christian form with ir- 
resistible force over the Roman provinces. 
Innumerable masses of the poor and op- 
pressed devote themselves to the ' ' philoso- 
phy of the Barbarians and the Orient ' ; (as 
a Greek thinker called Christianity) because 
they recognize in it their own experience of 
life, and have full assurance in their hope 
of relief. 

The Hellenico-Roman paganism offers a 
fruitless' resistance. The persecutions on the 
part of the state only hasten the spread of 
Christianity. What the state can not do, 
perhaps the Hellenic culture and philosophy 
may do. These, once mutually hostile, are 
reconciled in the face of common clanger. 
The dying lamp of antiquity flares and 
brightens when pure hearts and profound 



40 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

minds, otherwise despising the myths as su- 
perstition, now grasp them as symbols of 
higher truths. Philosophy goes forth, in the 
form of Neoplatonism. 

But Neoplatonism has itself apostatized 
from the rational and unitarian. Plotinus 
and Ammonius Saccas try in vain to restore 
it. It only unwittingly helps its adversary, 
especially when, to gain the masses, it con- 
sents to compete with him in miracles. Jam- 
blichus and others practice secret arts in 
order to outrival the Christian magi, and 
they glorify Pythagoras and Appollonius of 
Tyana as fit to rank with Jesus of Nazareth 
in miraculous gifts. By this they only con- 
tribute to the spread of magic and the prin- 
ciples of dualism. The current of Oriental 
notions proceeds all the more rapidly on its 
course of triumph. 

Christian dualism already feels itself strong 
enough to battle not only against its declared 
enemies, but also those Occidental elements of 
culture which in its beginnings it had received 
into its bosom and which had procured its 



ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. 41 

entrance among the more intelligent classes. 
It feels instinctively that even the school 
of thought which has sprung up within the 
Church is far too unitarian and rationalistic 
to be tolerated in the long run. Such men 
as Clemens of Alexandria and Origen, who 
are struck by what is external and imperish- 
able in Christianity, and know how to sepa- 
rate this from its dualistic form, fight a tragi- 
cal battle for the union of belief and thought. 
Admitting that Christ is all in all, the imme- 
diate power and wisdom of God, they never- 
theless wish to save the Hellenic philosophy 
from the destruction which a fanaticism, rev- 
elling in the certainty and all-sufficiency of 
revelation, directs against every expression 
of an occidental culture, whether in national 
life, or art, or science. They point out that 
philosophy, if it can do nothing else that is 
good, can furnish rational weapons against 
those who assail faith, and that it can and 
ought to be the "real wall of defence about 
the vineyard." Their argument is without 
effect. Philosophy is of the devil: yea, every- 



42 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

thing true and good in life and doctrine which 
heathendom has possessed, is declared by one 
of the fathers to be the imposture of Satan 
{ingenia diaboli qucedam de divinis affectandis)) 
and faith is so far independent of thought 
that it is better to say "I believe because 
it is improbable, absurd, impossible." * In 
vain the dying Clemens exclaims- "Even if 
philosophy were of the devil, Satan could 
deceive men only in the garb of an angel 
of light: he must allure men by the appear- 
ance of truth, by the intermixture of truth 
and falsehood; we ought therefore to seek 
and recognize the truth from whatever source 
it come. . . And even this gift to the pa- 
gans can have been theirs only by the will 
of God, and must consequently be included 
in the divine plan of educating humanity. 
. . If sin and disorder are attributable to 
the devil, how absurd to make him the au- 
thor and giver of so good a thing as phi- 
losophy ! . . . . God gave the Law to 
the Jews, and philosophy to the Gentiles, 

* Tertullian. 



ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. 43 

only to prepare for the coming of Christ." 
Such are the words that ring out the last 
dying echo of Hellenic culture and human- 
ity! It is not a mere accident that with 
philosophy Clemens and Origen also sought 
to save the unitarian principles in so far as 
to reject the doctrine of eternal punishment 
in hell, and maintain that the devil will fi- 
nally become good, and God be all in all. 
But such a view could not command atten- 
tion at a time when Christianity, only be- 
cause it was not sharply and consistently du- 
alistic, felt itself endangered by that wholly 
consistent and thorough-going dualism which 
under the name of Manicheism once more 
advanced against Europe from the Persian 
border. Although Manicheism seemed to in- 
cur defeat, nevertheless one of its former 
adherents, Augustine, infused its spirit into 
the Church. During the century which fol- 
lowed him the Germanic migration destroyed, 
along with the last schools, the last vestiges 
of Graaco - Romaic culture. The Barbarians 
were persuaded to receive baptism, often by 




THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

means of pomp and deceit; their divinities, 
as formerly the denizens of Olympus, were 
degraded to evil demons. Every thing an- 
tecedent to their union with the Church or 
disconnected with it, — the old experiences 
and traditions of these converted nations, — ■ 
all was condemned and referred to the world 
of evil. The dominion of Oriental dualism 
in Europe was absolutely established, and 
the long night of the Dark Ages had set in. 
Six centuries separate Proclus, the last Neo- 
platonican of any note, and Augustine the 
last of the Fathers educated in philosophy, 
from Anselm the founder of scholasticism ! 
Between them lies an expanse in which 
Gregory the Great and Scotus Erigena are 
almost the only stars, and these by no means 
of the first magnitude. "There are deserts 
in time, as well as space," says Bacon. 

' When again a feeble attempt at scientific 
activity was possible, the monkish scholar 
was happy enough to possess a few macu- 
lated leaves of Aristotle, obtained, but not 
directly, from the Arabs. Upon these leaves 






ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. 45 

lie read with amazement and admiration the 
method for a logical investigation. It was, 
for the rest, Hermes Trismegistus, Dionysius 
Areopagita (the translation of Scotus Eri- 
gena), and other such mystical works from 
unknown hands, with here and there touches 
of Neoplatonism which had been inserted by 
the dreamy scholiast when in need of ma- 
terial for rounding out the cosmology, the 
principles of which he had found in the dog- 
mas of the Church. 

As a matter of course the Dark Ages could 
not perceive, still less admit, the intimate re- 
lation existing between its cosmic views and 
those of Zoroaster; but still a dim suspicion 
of it can be detected. The learned men of 
the Middle Ages ascribed to Zoroaster the 
founding of the magical sciences. Sprenger 
(author of Malleus Malificarum, of which fa- 
tal work hereafter), Remigius, Jean Boclin, 
Delrio, and several other jurists and theolo- 
gians, who have acquired a sad notoriety as 
judges of witch-trials, in their writings as- 
cribe the origin of witchcraft to Zoroaster. 



46 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

The dualistic notion was not modified after 
entering Christianity, but intensified. The 
religion of Zoroaster, which presupposes a 
good first principle,* allows the evil which 
has in time arisen, in the course of time to 
disappear ; and it ends with the doctrine 
which shines out faintly even in the New 
Testament, of the final "restoration of all 
things" (<xTtoHa.T&6T<x.6\s Ttavraov^ and in conse- 
quence reduces evil to something merely phe- 
nomenal. In the doctrines of the Church, 
however, as they were established through 
the influence of Augustine, the Manicheian, 
evil, though arisen in time, is made eternal. 
This difference is of great practical signifi- 
cance and explains why dualism did not bear 
the same terrible fruits in its home in the 
Orient as in the Occident. The awful sepa- 
ration and contrast with which the divina 
comedia of the Middle Ages ends, — the wails 
and curses that arise from hell to intensify the 

* This lias been denied in so far as the original teachings 
of Zoroaster are concerned, but is confirmed by a passage in 
Aristotle (Metaphys., I., xiv., c. 4). 



ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. 47 

bliss of the redeemed, — form a conception so 
revolting that it could not be incorporated 
with thought and feeling without rendering 
them savage. Compassion, benevolence, love, 
• — those qualities through which man feels a 
kinship with the divine, lose their significance 
and are despoiled of their eternal seal, when 
they are found no longer in his Maker ex- 
cept as limited or rather suspended by the 
action of another quality which the pious man 
will force himself to call justice, but which 
an irrepressible voice from the innermost re- 
cesses of his soul calls cruelty. To this must 
be added a further important consideration. 
The servant of Ormuzd is no more the prop- 
erty of the devil than the earth he treads 
upon. To be sure he is surrounded on every 
side by the treachery of Ahriman and all the 
demons, but this only because he is called 
and already endowed with power to be the 
champion of the Good upon the earth. It is 
as such that he is placed in the tumult of the 
battle. The power for good once imparted to 
him, and constantly renewed through prayer, 



48 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

is withal also his own; he may use it with- 
out losing himself in the perplexing ques- 
tion where liberty ceases and grace begins. 
Every one adhering to the doctrine of light 
stands on his own feet. This is true of every 
servant of Ormuzd; Zoroaster has made in 
this respect no distinction between priest and 
layman. Even belief upon authority, in it- 
self an encroachment upon free personality, 
preserves for it in this form of religion a free 
and inviolable arena. 

In the Church of the Middle Ages the case 
is different, and it cannot be presented better 
than in the following words of the Neo-Lu- 
theran Yilmar, when he would preserve ab- 
solutely to the clergy "the power to keep 
the congregation together by the word, the 
sacraments and ecclesiastical authority, the 
power to cleave the head of sin with a single 
word, the power to descend into a soul in 
which the enemy has spread the gloom of 
insanity and force the defiant knees of the 
maniac to bend and his frenzied fists to fold 
in prayer, yea, the power [here we have the 



ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. 49 

climax, which is rather tame after the fore- 
going] to descend into a soul in which the 
ancient enemy has established his abode, and 
there fight the insolent giant from the realms 
of darkness face to face and eye to eye. All 
this " — continues Yilmar, himself not unlike 
a frantic conjurer wishing to summon the 
ghost of the Dark Ages from its grave — " all 
this is not in the power of the congregation 
nor of the ministry, who are not endowed 
with the requisite authority, commission, 
mandate and power. The congregation (i. e., 
the laymen) is not able to look into the furi- 
ous eyes of the devil; for what is prophesied 
of the last days, that even the elect, were 
it possible, should be seduced, applies with 
greater force to the especial apparition of Sa- 
tan in this world : before it the congregation 
is scattered like flakes of snow, not seduced 
but terrified to death. Only we (the clergy) 
are unterrified and fearless ; for he who has 
rejected the prince of this world has placed 
us before the awful serpent-eye of the arch- 
fiend, before his blasphemous and scornful 



50 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

mouth, before his infernally distorted face."* 
These words from the pen of a fanatical du- 
alist of our own time well represent, as in- 
dicated above, the commonly received views 
of the Middle Ages; and it is not therefore to 
be wondered at that the mediaeval genera- 
tions, surrendering personality, threw them- 
selves precipitately, in order to be saved, into 
the arms of the magical institution of deliver- 
ance. The phenomena which are delineated 
in the following pages will not seem so ar- 
bitrary and strange after this introductory 
glance at the middle-age philosophy, as they 
might otherwise at first sight. Even they are 
a product of an inner necessity. Were it pos- 
sible — and deplorable attempts are not want- 
ing — to revive in the thoughts, feelings and 
imagination of humanity the dogmas of medi- 
aeval times, we should then witness a partial 
re-enactment of their terrible scenes. To de- 
pict them has not only a purely historic inter- 
est, but a cautionary and practical as well. 

* A. F. Ch. Vilmar: "Theologie der Tliatsachen wider die 
Theologie der Rhetorik" (Marburg, 1857). 



II. 

THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 

Magic is the harbinger of Science. In the 
history of human development, the dim per- 
ception precedes the clear, and the dominion 
of imagination that of reason. Before the lat- 
ter could take upon itself the laborious task 
of connecting together by its own laws the 
facts of external and internal experience, — ■ 
before there was any philosophy or natural 
science, imagination was bestirring itself in 
the creation of magic. 

Like science, magic in its original form is 
based upon the principle that all things ex- 
isting are concatenated. Science searches 
for the links of union both deductively and 
inductively; magic, seeking its support in 
the external resemblances between existing 



52 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

things,* and in a vague assurance of the 
power of the will and of words, establishes 
this connection freely by means of arbitra- 
ry associations between incongruous objects. 
Man engaged in a struggle for physical exist- 
ence, aims in it less at theoretical knowing 
than at practical being able. The knowledge 
of mysteries will furnish means of becoming 
acceptable to his God, inaccessible to injurious 
influences, and master of his present and fu- 
ture existence and destiny. 

The magical usages which exist among 
every people, present an almost infinite va- 
riety of forms. In the end, however, they 
can all be reduced to a single type. 

Daily experience has taught that there ex- 
ists between every cause and its effect a cer- 
tain proportionate amount of force. Now 
since the effect aimed at in resorting to mag- 
ic is of an extraordinary nature, the means 
which the magical art prescribes must possess 

* Thus, for instance, the red lustre of copper was supposed to 
indicate that it was connected with Mars, which shines with a 
reddish light. 



THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 53 

extraordinary efficacy, such as reason can pre- 
dict for it neither a priori nor by inductive 
reasoning. Furthermore, experience teaches 
us that will, as a mere inert desire, not yet 
expressed in action, does not attain its goal. 
Magical power therefore can not be sought 
for in the mere will as such, but action, that 
working of the senses which the will employs 
as a means, in which it reveals itself, must be 
added, whether the force of this sense-means, 
as the original magic supposes, depends on 
its mystical but necessary connection with its 
corresponding object in a higher sphere (for 
example, the connection between the metals 
and the planets), or as in the Church-magic, 
on an arbitrary decision of God, ordaining 
that a given means, employed as prescribed 
by him, shall produce an effect inconceivable 
by reason. In all employment of magic en- 
ter consequently, first, the subjective spir- 
itual factor, — the will (in the language of 
the Church, faith); secondly, the sensuous 
means, — the fetich, the amulet, the holy wa- 
ter, the host, the formula of exorcism, the 



54 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

ceremony, etc.; and thirdly, the incompre- 
hensible ("supernatural") power which this 
means, appropriated by the will (or faith), 
possesses in the magical act. 

A belief in magic is found among all na- 
tions. With those of unitarian views it was 
destined to be forced more and more into the 
background by the growth of speculation and 
natural science. With them there was also 
but one form of magic, although those in 
possession of its secret were considered able 
to exercise it for a useful or an injurious pur- 
pose alike. Only among nations holding du- 
alistic views do we meet with magic in two 
forms: with the priests a ivhite and a black, — 
the former as the good gift of Ormuzd, the 
latter as the evil gift of Ahriman; with the 
Christians of the Middle Ages a celestial magic 
and a diabolical, — the former a privilege of 
the Church and conferred by God as a weap- 
on to aid in the conquest of Satan; the latter 
an infernal art to further unbelief and wick- 
edness. Under a unitarian theory magic is 
only a preparation for natural philosophy and 



THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH 55 

gradually gives place to it, until it is confined 
to the lowest classes as a relic of a past stage 
of development. The dualistic religious sys- 
tems, on the contrary, blend in an intimate 
union with magic, give to it the same uni- 
versally and eternally valid power which they 
ascribe to themselves, and place it on their 
own throne in the form of a divine and sacra- 
mental secret. Only thus can faith in magic 
stamp whole ages and periods of culture with 
its peculiar seal; only thus — after its separa- 
tion into celestial and diabolical, and in that 
causal relation to the temporal or eternal 
weal or woe of man in which it is placed — ■ 
does it become possessed of an absolute sov- 
ereignty over the imagination and emotions of 
a people. 

Our consideration of the middle-age magic 
may commence with a description of the ce- 
lestial or privileged magic, that is to say, that 
of the Church; in order that we may proceed 
in natural order to the ill-reputed magic of 
the learned (astrology, alchemy, sorcery), and 
the persecuted -popular magic (in which the 



56 THE MAGIC OE THE MIDDLE AGES. 

Church saw the really diabolical form); and 
end with an account of the terrible catastro- 
phe which was caused by the contest which 
raged between them. 

It is not the fault of the writer if the 
reader finds in the magic of the Church a 
caricature of what is holy, in which the comi- 
cal element is overbalanced by the repulsive. 
The more objective the representation is to 
be made, the more unpleasant its features be- 
come. We will, then, be brief. 



Like a thoughtful mother the Church cher- 
ishes and cares for man, and surrounds him 
from the cradle to the grave with its safe- 
guards of magic. Shortly after the birth of 
a child the priest must be ready to sprinkle 
it with holy water, which by prayer and con- 
juration has been purified from the pollution 
of the demons inhabiting even this element. 
For the feeble being begotten in sin and by 
nature Lucifer's, property, without the grace 



THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 57 

of baptism, would be eternally lost to heaven, 
and eternally doomed to the torments of 
hell. 1 

Therefore more than one conscientious ser- 
vant of the Church essayed to devise some 
means by which the saving water might be 
brought in contact with the child before it 
saw the light. Still this precautionary meas- 
ure never became officially adopted. The ef- 
ficacy of the baptismal water exceeds that 
of the pool Bethesda, which removed only 
bodily infirmities. Baptism saves millions of 
souls from hell. Foreseeing this the devil, 
filled with evil devices, had determined, al- 
ready before the rise of Christianity, to de- 
base and scorn this sacrament by making, in 
anticipation, a copy of it in the Mithras mys- 

1 "Non baptisatis parvulis nemo promittat inter damnation- 
em regnumque ccelorura quietis vel felicitatis cujuslibet atque 
ubilibet quasi medium locum; hoc enim eis etiam haeresis Pe- 
lagiana promisit" (Augustinus: Da Anima et Ejus Origine, 1. I., 
c. rx). In one of bis letters Augustine declares that even if the 
parents hurry to the priest, and he likewise hasten to baptize the 
child, but find it dead before it has obtained the sacrament, it is 
nevertheless then doomed to be eternally tormented with the 
damned, and to blaspheme the name of God. 



58 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

teries instituted by him, which insolently im- 
itate in other respects the mysteries of the 
Church. 

In baptism other means, consecrated by 
the priest, co-operate with the water: viz., 
the oil, the spittle (which the priest after 
baptism lets fall upon the child, and the 
efficacy of which is derived from Mark 
vii. 33), the salt, the milk and the honey. 2 
Besides, there are the sign of the cross 
and the conjuration, which drive the tempt- 
er out of the child and prepare room for 
the Holy Ghost. With these magic cere- 
monies the child is received into the Church 
and from thenceforth becomes a sharer in 
the protection which it gives against the 
evil. 

Baptismal, or holy water, when drunk by 
the sick and infirm, heals and strengthens; 
if sprinkled upon the fields promotes fer- 
tility, or given to the domestic animals, 
affords them protection against witchcraft. 

2 All these are found, in connection with baptism, in heathen 
mysteries. 



THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 59 

As baptism is the first saving and sanc- 
tifying sacrament offered to man, so the 
miction with holy oil which is administered 
to the dying, is the last. Between them 
the eucharist is a perennial source of power 
and sanctification, — the eucharist in which 
"Bread and wine, placed upon the altar, 
after performed consecration, are G-od's true 
flesh and blood, which flesh perceptibly to 
the senses (sensualiter) is touched by the 
hands of the priest and masticated by the 
teeth of the believer.' 7 3 When the priest 
has pronounced the formula of transforma- 
tion, he elevates the host, 4 now no longer 
bread but the body of Christ, the congrega- 
tion kneels and the ringing of bells proclaims 
to the neighborhood that the greatest of all 
the works of magic is accomplished. Eaten 
by the faithful, the flesh of Christ enters into 
their own flesh and blood and wonderfully 

3 Extract from the formula given at the council of Eome, 
A. d. 1059, to Berengar of Tours, to which he was forced to 
swear under penalty of death. 

4 The wafer substituted in the twelfth century for bread was 
called the host. 



60 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

strengthens both soul and body. 5 Heretics 
in Arras who believed that righteousness was 
necessary to salvation and doubted the doc- 
trine of transubstantiation, were converted 
as soon as Bishop Gerhard told them that, 
in the time of Gregory the Great, the con- 

5 The discovery made in our days by the Danish theologian 
Martensens that the food obtained in the Supper of our Lord 
is not for the soul only, but also for the body, — for the nour- 
ishment of our ascension-body, is not really new; the pagan 
initiated into the Mithras mysteries was taught that the con- 
secrated bread and wine, being assimilated into his flesh and 
blood, gave immortality to his corporeal being. Like presup- 
positions produce in different times like ideas. 

An important question in the Middle Ages and one which 
had been already argued with great heat from the time of Pe- 
trus Lombardus until the seventeenth century, is propounded 
as follows: Has a rat which has eaten of the host thereby par- 
taken of Christ's body? In connection with this it was fur- 
ther asked: How is a rat which has eaten of Christ's body to 
be treated, — ought it to be killed or honored? Ought the 
sacrament to be venerated even in the stomach of the rat? 
If some of the consecrated bread is found in the stomach of 
a rat, is it a duty to eat it? What must be done if immedi- 
ately after partaking of the sacrament one is attacked by vomit- 
ing? When a rat can eat the host, can not the devil also do 
it? — One of the last products of these important investigations 
is a book published in Tubingen in 1593, entitled: "Mus ex- 
enteratus, hoc est tractatus valde magistralis super qucestione qua- 
dam theologica splnosa et multum subtili," etc. 






THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. Gl 

secrated bread had taken, before a doubting 
woman, the shape of Christ's bleeding finger. 
A pious hermit who began to be afflicted by 
the same doubt, regained his faith when at 
the Communion he saw an angel apply the 
knife to an infant Jesus, at the very moment 
the priest broke the bread. There is much 
in the legends and chronicles about Jews 
who having secretly procured the host, and, 
to be revenged upon Christ, proceeding to 
pierce it with a knife, saw the blood stream 
forth in abundance ; sometimes, indeed, a 
beautiful bleeding boy suddenly revealing 
himself. Such stories being freely circulated, 
led to severe persecutions (as in Namur, 
1320). 6 

6 During the period of political reaction in 1815, when Schle- 
gel and de Maistre praised the Middle Ages as man's era of 
bliss, and Gorres sought to restore to credence during the 
"state period of enlightenment" all the forgotten ghost and 
vampire stories, the clergy of Brussels were celebrating with 
processions and other solemnities the anniversary of this per- 
secution of the Jews in Namur. 

At the synod in a. d. 1099 a proclamation was issued forbid- 
ding priests to enter into any servile relations with laymen, be- 
cause it were shameful if the most holy hands which prepared 



62 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

If the eucharist is a partaking of food 
which strengthens the faithful in their strug- 
gle against sin, the sign of the cross is to be 
considered as his sword, and the sacred amulet 
as his armor. The cross is the sign in which 
the Christian shall conquer. [" In hoc signo 
vinces. ,r j With it he must commence every 
act; with it he repels every attack of the 
demons. "He who wishes to be convinced 
concerning this," says St. Athanasius, "needs 
only to make the sign of the cross, which 
has become so ridiculous to the pagans, be- 
fore the mocking delusions of the demons, 
the deceits of the oracles and the magi; and 
immediately he shall see the devil flee, the 
oracles confounded and all magic and sorcery 
revenged." The amulets employed by the 
Church are various: medals bearing the im- 
age of Mary, consecrated images, especially 

the flesh and blood of Almighty God should serve the uncon- 
secrated laity. The famous orator Bourdaloue requested that 
greater homage should be paid to the priest than to the holy 
Virgin, because God had been incarnated in her bosom only 
once, but was in the hands of the priest daily, as often as the 
mass was read. 



THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 63 

the so-called lambs of God 7 (agnus Dei), the 
manufacture and sale of which a papal bull 
of 1471 reserves for the head of the Roman 
Church. If these bring the clergy immense 
sums of money, they also possess great 

» The oldest Christian art in which the dying spirit of antiq- 
uity yet reveals itself, represented Jesus as a shepherd youth 
carrying a lamb upon his bosom. Many a one could only turn 
away sadly from the beaming world of Olympus to the new 
Christian ideal, and when they must needs so do, they would 
fain transfer to the new "puer redemptor" the mild beauty 
of the former youthful mediator, Dionysus Zagreus. In the 
hymns, still preserved to us, of Synesius, who combined in 
one person the bishop and the Greek who still longs for wis- 
dom and beauty (doubtless known to many of our readers by 
Kingsley's novel of Hypatia), this sadness is in wonderful har- 
mony with Christian devotion. With the ruin of the antique 
world, this longing as well as the capability of satisfying it 
ceased. The material symbol obtained thereafter a more prom- 
inent place. If the Phoenicians and Canaanites represented 
their god corporeally as the powerful steer, the Christians chose 
the patient and inoffensive lamb as the type of theirs. The 
Council of Constantinople in a. d. 692 confirmed this lamb-sym- 
bol. As Aaron had made a golden calf, Pope Sergius III. pro- 
cured a lamb to be made of gold and ivory. All who rebelled 
against its worship were treated as disorderly and heretical. In 
the time of Charlemagne one of them, Bishop Claudius of Turin, 
from whom the Waldenses derive their origin, complained: "Isti 
perversorum dogmatum auctores agnos vivos volunt vorare et in 
pariete pictos odor are" 






64 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

power. They protect against dangers from 
fire or water, against storm and hail, sick- 
ness and witchcraft. 8 Along with the amu- 
lets the so-called conception -billets, which 
■ the Carmelite monks sell for a small sum, 
are of manifold use. These billets are made 
of consecrated paper, and heal, if swallowed, 
diseases natural and supernatural; laid in a 
cradle guard the child against witchcraft ; 
buried in the corner of a field protect it 
against bad weather and destructive insects. 
Conception-billets are put under the thresh- 
olds of houses and barns, are attached to 
beer casks and butter dishes to avert sor- 
cery. They are fabricated by the monks ac- 

8 Pope Urban Vitus presented an agnus Dei to the Byzantine 
Emperor. An accompanying note described its wonderful 
powers in the following monkish-Latin hexameters: — 

Balsamus et munda cera cum chrismatis unda 
Conficiurd agnum, quod munus do tibi magnum 
Fonte velut natum per mystica sanclificatum. 
Jhdgura desursum depellit, et omne malignum 
Peccatum frangit, ut Chrisii sanguis et angit. 
Prcegnans servatur, simul et partus liberatur. 
Dona refert dignis, virtutem destruit ignis. 
Portatus munde defluclibus eripit undce. 



THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 65 

cording to an authenticated formulary which, 
as characteristic and comparatively brief, de- 
serves citation: — 

"S tm&mz thee, paper (or parchment), thou whieh 
Servest the ntt(l$ of humanity, servest as the deposi- 
tory of ($tnX f $ wonderful xXnH and holy laws, as also 
aeeording to divine eummantl the marriage eontraet he- 
txvmx ®ohias and «^arah was written upon thee, the 
jlaiptees paying: ®hey tooh paper and ginned their 
marriage wvtnmt through thee, (§ paper, hath also 
the devit heen eonquered hy the angeL K adjuve thee 
hy 60d, the |£ord of the nnivmt (Sign of the erossl), 
the Jta (sign of the erossO, and the §roly $host 
(Sip of the erossl), who spreads out the heavens as 
a parchment on whieh he deseriftes as with divine ehar- 
aeters his ntagnifieeuee. §less (sign of the erossl), 
<*) (Sod, sanctify (sign of the m$$\) this paper that 
^.0 it may frustrate the worn of the gevil! 

" fte who upon his person earner this paper written 
with holy words, or affixes it to a house, shall he 
freed from the visitations of ^atan through him who 
eometh U judge tXit quiefc and dead* 

"S*t us pray. 

"Pighty and vesistless $od, the $od of vengeanee, 
$od of our fathers, who hast revealed through Poses 
and the prophets the ftoohs of thy aneieut eovenant 



66 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

ami many $wxt\% at thy hinted, and diitet uxm the 
(Stopl 0f thy $mx t0 Xjtjc written Ixy the evangelic 
rnxtl ap#tle£ t Mm (£ip ot the tw$& !) and ^aaetity 
(£ip of to ami) tW \m\nx that thy mevey may 
Ire made haoum mxta whatwvev $ml £hatt heai 4 with 
him thi£ jsamfl thing ami t%m holy letter; and that 
alt tret^mttiw against him fxm the toil and hy 
the 0ton»# trt ^ataaie witehewft may he frawtaM 
though $httet mix IpmL %mm. 
"(fflht ppe* t0 he frimnhtett with holy watev-)" 

With the amulets and these conception-bil- 
lets belong also in the armory of the Church, 
the wonder-working relics, and images of the 
saints. God has ordained graciously that the 
Church shall not give up its battle against 
the powers of sin for want of weapons. Its of- 
fensive and defensive appliances are manifold. 
Its warriors, the priests, are like knights en- 
cased in mail from head to foot, and armed 
with lance, sword, dagger and morning star. 
Almost every district has its treasure of relics, 
which, preserved in shrines and exhibited on 
solemn occasions to the pious people, consti- 
tutes its palladium, impedes or prevents the 
attack of hostile forces, and assuages or averts 



THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 67 

the ravages of plagues. Not only corporeal 
relics of saints and martyrs, but also every 
thing they may have touched during their 
lifetime, yea, even the very dew-drops upon 
their graves, are a terror to the fiends and a 
means of spiritual and bodily strength unto 
the faithful. The miraculous properties of 
the images are recounted in a hundred le- 
gends. By the direct agency of divine power, 
there exists uninterruptedly between them 
and the persons they represent a mystical 
relation. Upon this St. Hieronymus throws 
some light when he exclaims against Vigilan- 
tius, who had blindly opposed the worship of 
images: "You dare prescribe laws to God ! 
You presume to put the apostles in chains so 
that they are kept even to the Day of Judg- 
ment in their prison, and are denied the priv- 
ilege of being with their Lord, although it is 
written that they shall be with Him wherever 
they go ! If the Lamb is omnipresent, we 
must believe that those who are with the 
Lamb are omnipresent also. If the devils 
and the demons rove through the world and 



68 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

by their inconceivable rapidity of motion are 
present everywhere, should then the martyrs, 
after shedding their blood, remain confined in 
their coffins and never be able to leave them ! " 
As old age and death are consequences of 
Adam's fall, so are almost all ailments pro- 
duced by that power over man's corporeal 
nature conceded to Satan, when G-od pro- 
nounced his curse upon the race. So also are 
the remaining diseases and infirmities of man, 
called either rightly or wrongly natural, cured 
with greatest certainty by invoking the help 
of Grod. Therefore the mediator between Grod 
and men, the Church, through its servants is 
the only sure and only legitimate physician. 
[" Operatio sanandi est in ecclesia per verba, 
ritus, exoreismos, aquam, salem, lierbas, idque 
nedum contra diabolos et effectus magicos, sed 
et morbos omnes."] The priest effects cures 
in behalf of the Church and in the name of 
Grod by means of prayer, the laying on of 
hands, exorcism, relics and consecrated natu- 
ral means, especially water, salt and oil. In 
doing this he acts as the visible delegate of an 



THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 69 

unseen higher physician, the saint ordained of 
God to be the healer of the sickness. For 
every affliction has its physician among the 
ranks of the saints. St. Valentine cures epi- 
lepsy, St. Gervasius rheumatic pains, St. Mi- 
chael de Sanatis cancer and tumors, St. Judas 
coughs, St. Ovidius deafness, St. Sebastian 
contagious fevers and poisonous bites, St. 
Apollonia toothache, St. Clara and St. Lucia 
rheum in the eyes, and so on. The legends 
relate wonderful effects of the healing powers 
possessed by St. Damianus, St. Patrick and 
St. Hubert. The terrible disease of hydro- 
phobia was cured by the last named. In the 
cloisters in Luxembourg named after this 
saint, ' hydrophobia was cured many years 
after his death by bringing the afflicted into 
the church during the progress of the service, 
and pressing a hair from the saint's mantle 
into a slight incision made for the occasion in 
his forehead. For the benefit of those who 
lived far from the cloister, the so-called " Hu- 
bertus-bands " and " Hubertus-keys " were 
consecrated; these were applied, heated white- 



70 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

hot, to the wound. 9 Similar curative agen- 
cies might be mentioned by hundreds. 

Among all afflictions, the state of being pos- 
sessed by devils occupies the most remarkable 
place in the annals of the Church, and is seen 
to have required the most powerful exorcisms 
for its cure. The ecclesiastical pathology de- 
clares that in this disease the devil is unhid- 
den, while in all others he is concealed. The 
exorciser who is to expel the fiend appears in 
full priestly vesture; incense and consecrated 
wax tapers are lighted, all the objects sur- 
rounding the demoniac are sprinkled with 
holy water, the air around is purified by the 
pronunciation of certain formulas; then follow 
fervent prayers and finally the desperate and 
awful struggle between the demon, now con- 
vulsively distorting the limbs of his victim and 
uttering by his lips the most harrowing blas- 
phemies, and the priest, who employs more 

9 As late as 1784 a statute was issued by Carl Theodor, Elector 
of Pfalz, referring to the magic power of St. Hubert-relics, and 
forbidding the employment of "worldly" remedies against the 
bite of mad dogs. 



THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 71 

and more powerful adjurations until the vic- 
tory finally is his. 

The secular medical art — that relying up- 
on natural means — as either superfluous, or 
as strongly tainted with heresy, must be de- 
spised. Dissection, in order to investigate 
the structure of the human body, is pre- 
sumption; it can even be asked with reason 
if it does not argue contempt for the doc- 
trine of the final resurrection. The secular 
art of healing was consequently for a long 
time confined to the infidel Jews. But when 
princes and the opulent, weakly apprehend- 
ing the insufficiency of the word, the relics 
and the consecrated remedies, had begun to 
keep physicians, the profane art of medicine 
became a lucrative profession, and schools for 
its cultivation were established under royal 
protection. Such is that of Salerno, which 
the warders of Zion can not regard without 
suspicion. It is a school which prescribes 
pedantic rules for diet, as if one's diet could 
protect against the attacks of the devil ! The 
Greek pagan Hippocrates, who for a long 



72 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

time wandered about with Jews and Arabs, 
thus finds at last a settled abode within its 
walls, — Hippocrates who had to assert of 
clemonianism (morbus sacer) itself that it is 
"nowise more divine, nowise more infernal, 
than any other disease ! ;J When the teacher 
is such, what must the disciples be ? The 
Church will not forbid absolutely the prac- 
tice of medicine, since it may do some good 
in the case of external injury, or in time of 
pestilence ; but she must keep strict watch 
over the orthodoxy of those who cultivate 
this art. At several councils (as at Bheims 
in 1131, the second Lateran in 1139, and at 
Tours, 1163) she has strenuously prohibited 
her servants from having any thing to do 
with this suspected profession. Experience 
has taught, however, not to exaggerate the 
dangers attending it. The secular physicians 
must frequently concede that such and such 
a sickness is caused by witchcraft, and con- 
sequently is of supernatural origin. Slan- 
derers might allege that such a declaration 
is more convenient than an investigation into 



THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 73 

the causes of the disease in the natural way, 
and less unpleasant than acknowledging one's 
ignorance. But be this as it may: the conces- 
sion implies a recognition of the supernatu- 
ralism of the Church, and may therefore be 
rather recommended than reprehended. 

"It is," says Thomas Aquinas, "a dogma 
of faith that the demons can produce wind, 
storms, and rain of fire from heaven. The 
atmosphere is a battle-field between angels 
and devils. The latter work the constant in- 
jury of man, the former his melioration; and 
the consequence is that changeableness of 
weather which threatens to frustrate the 
hopes of husbandry. And when Lucifer is 
able to bestow even upon man — on sorcerers 
and wizards— the power to destroy the fields, 
the vineyards and dwellings of man by rain, 
hail and lightning, is it to be wondered at if 
the Church, which is man's protection against 
the devil, and whose especial calling it is to 
fight him, should in this sphere also be his 
counterpoise, and should seek from the treas- 
ury of its divine power, means adequate to 



74 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

frustrate his atmospheric mischiefs ? To these 
means belong the church bells, provided they 
have been duly consecrated and baptized. 
The aspiring steeples around which cluster 
the low dwellings of men, are to be likened, 
when the bells in them are ringing, to the 
hen spreading its protecting wings over its 
chickens ; for the tones of the consecrated 
metal repel the demons and avert storm and 
lightning 77 (" Vivos voco, mortuos plango, SUL- 
phura frango, 77 a common inscription on 
church bells). Tillers of the soil who desire 
especial protection from the Church for their 
harvests, pay it tithes for a blessing. Dur- 
ing protracted drought the priests make in- 
tercession and inaugurate rain-processions, in 
which images of the Virgin are borne into 
the fields, which are sprinkled with holy 
water while the weather-collect is chanted. 10 

10 In the year 1240 a large rain-procession was held in Liit- 
tich. Three times repeated it failed of all effect, "because in 
the supplication of all saints God's mother had been forgotten." 
In a new procession "Salve regina" was therefore sung, and 
the rain immediately came down with such violence that the de- 
vout procession was dispersed. — The clsrgy sometimes, in order 



THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH 75 

If the fields are visited by hurtful insects, 
the Church has remedies against them also. 
It commands them in the name of God to 
depart, and if they do not obey, a regular 
process is instituted against them, which ends 
in their exemplary punishment; for they are 
excommunicated by the Church. Such pro- 
cesses were very frequently resorted to in 
the Middle Ages, and a couple of such in- 
stances will be cited. 

In the year 1474, the may-bug committed 
great depredations in the neighborhood of 
Berne. When the authorities of the city 
had sought relief from the bishop of Lau- 
sanne, Benoit cle Montferrand, against this 
scourge, he determined to issue a letter of ex- 
communication, which was solemnly read by 
a priest in the churchyard of Berne. "Thou 
irrational, imperfect creature, thou may-bug," 
thus the letter commenced, "thou whose kind 
was never enclosed in Noah's ark ! in the 

to produce rain, would lead a donkey before the gate of the 
church, hang the litany about his neck, put a wafer in his 
mouth, and then bury the animal alive. 



76 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

name of my gracious lord, the bishop of Lau- 
sanne, by the power of the glorified Trinity 
through the merits of Jesus Christ, and by 
the obedience you owe the Holy Church, I 
command you may-bugs, all in common and 
each one in particular, to depart from all 
places where nourishment for men and cat- 
tle germinates and grows. 77 The letter ends 
with a summons to the insects, to present 
themselves on the sixth day thereafter, if 
they do not disappear before that time, at 
one o'clock, p. m., at Wivelsburg, and assume 
the responsibility before the court of the 
gracious lord of Lausanne. This letter was 
likewise read from the pulpit while the con- 
gregation, kneeling, repeated "three Pater- 
nosters and three Ave Marias." Arrange- 
ments were made beforehand for a legal trial 
with strict attention to all professional forms. 
Among these was of course that the accused 
should have a lawyer. But when no advo- 
cate in Berne would consent to appear in be- 
half of the insects, the bishop devised the 
plan of summoning from hell the shade of an 



THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 77 

infamous lawyer named Perrodet, who had 
died a few years previously, and of directing 
him to plead the cause of the may-bugs with 
the same diligence he had so often displayed 
in his lifetime in defence of vile clients. But 
in spite of many summons, neither Perrodet 
nor his clients deigned to appear. After the 
expiration of the time fixed for beginning the 
defence, and when certain doubts concerning 
the proper form of procedure had been re- 
moved, the episcopal tribunal finally gave its 
verdict, which was excommunication in the 
name of the Holy Trinity, "to you, accursed 
vermin, that are called may-bugs, and which 
can not even be counted among the animals.' 7 
The government ordered the authorities of 
the afflicted district to report concerning the 
good effects of the excommunication; "But," 
a chronicle of the time complains, "no effect 
was observed, because of our sins." 

Since any neglect of legal forms was thought 
to deprive a judgment of its magical as well 
as legal power, the most scrupulous care was 
exercised in the conduct of these frequently 



78 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

recurring processes against may-bugs, 'grass- 
hoppers, cabbage-worms, field-rats and other 
noxious vermin. There is yet extant a de- 
tailed and luminous document by the learned 
Bartholomeus Chassanseus (born 1480), in 
which the question if, and how, such pests 
should be proceeded against in the courts is 
carefully considered: whether they should ap- 
pear personally or by deputy; whether they 
are subject to a spiritual or a secular tribu- 
nal, and if the penalty of excommunication 
can be applied to them. He proves on many 
grounds that the jurisdiction to which they 
are accountable is the spiritual, and that they 
may properly be excommunicated. Still the 
question of jurisdiction remained unsettled, 
and a civil prosecution of the field-rats in 
Tyrol, 1519-20, proves among other things 
that a secular tribunal sometimes considered 
itself justified in deciding such suits. The 
peasant Simon Fliss appeared before Wil- 
liam of Hasslingen, judge in Grlurns and Mais 
(Ober- In- valley), as plaintiff against the 
field-rats which were committing great dep- 



THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 79 

redations in his parish. The court then ap- 
pointed Hans Grinebner, a citizen of Grlurns, 
to be the advocate of the accused, and fur- 
nished him, before witnesses, with the re- 
quisite commission. Thereupon the plain- 
tiff chose as his advocate Schwarz Minig, and 
obtained from the tribunal upon demand a 
warrant of authority for him likewise. On 
the da}?- of trial, the Wednesday after St. 
Philip's and St. James's day, many witnesses 
were examined, establishing that the rats 
had caused great destruction. Schwarz Minig 
then made his final plea that the noxious an- 
imals should be charged to withdraw from 
mischief, as otherwise the people of Stilf 
could not pay the annual tithes to their high 
patron. Grinebner, counsel for the defence, 
could not and would not make exception to 
the testimony, but tried to convince the court 
that his clients u enjo}^ed a certain right of 
usufruct which could hardly be denied them." 
If the court were of another opinion and con- 
sidered it best to eject them, he yet hoped 
they would first be granted another place 



80 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

where they could support themselves. Be- 
sides there should be given them at their de- 
parture a sufficient escort to protect them 
against their enemies, whether cat, dog, or 
other adversaries; and he also hoped that, if 
any of the rats were pregnant, time might be 
allowed them to be delivered and afterwards 
depart in safety with their progeny. The de- 
cision was rendered in the following terms: 
''After accusation and defence, after state- 
ment and contradiction, and after due con- 
sideration of all that pertains to justice, it is 
by this sentence determined that those nox- 
ious animals which are called field-rats must, 
within two weeks after the promulgation of 
this judgment, depart and forever remain far 
aloof from the fields and the meadows of Stilf. 
But if one or several of the animals are preg- 
nant, or unable on account of their youth to 
follow, then shall they enjoy during further 
two weeks safety and protection from every 
body, and after these two weeks depart." 

We can form some impression of the im- 
mense power of prayer and exorcism when 



THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH 81 

we consider that the influence of the will and 
the idea expressed in the word co-operate in 
them with the power of the word itself as a 
mere form. For the material word, the sound 
caught by the ear, the formula, as such, exer- 
cises a magical effect without one's knowing 
its meaning. The mass of the people with 
their ignorance of the official language of the 
Church and of learning, would he badly off 
if those "Paternosters" and "Ave Marias/' 
committed to memory without understanding 
them, should be spiritually ineffectual, — if the 
Latin mass to which the congregation listens 
should be wanting in edifying and sanctifying 
power because it is not comprehended. The 
formularies of the Church established at dif- 
ferent times and for various purposes are for 
this reason of high importance and must be 
followed conscientiously. 11 A single proof of 

11 Especially was the Church of the Middle Ages rich in awful 
formularies of malediction, testifying to an enormous brutaliza- 
tion of thought and feeling. A single specimen of these formu- 
laries will be more than sufficient to illustrate: — 

"By the might, power and authority of God, the Almighty 
Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost and in the name of 
6 



82 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

their extraordinary power may be instanced 
here. In the year 1532 the devil brought 
into the heavens a huge comet, which threat- 

tlie Holy Virgin the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the 
holy angels, archangels, St. Michael and St. John the Baptist, in 
the name of the holy apostle Peter and all the apostles, in the 
name of the holy Stephen and all the holy martyrs, and St. 
Adelgunda and all the holy yirgins, and of all the saints in 
heaven and on earth to whom power is given to bind and 
loose, — we curse, execrate and exclude from the mother Church 
through the bond of malediction (here follows the name of the 
persons). May their children be orphaned; may they be cursed 
upon the field, cursed in the city, in the forest, in their houses 
and barns, in their chamber and their bed, in the town-hall, in 
the village, on land and sea; may they be cursed in the church, 
in the churchyard, in the court-room, on the public square and 
in war; whether they be talking, sleeping, waking, eating or 
drinking, whether they be going or resting, or doing any other 
thing, let them be accursed in soul and body, reason and all 
their senses: cursed be their progeny, cursed be the fruit of 
their land, cursed be all their limbs, head, nose, mouth, teeth, 
throat, eyes, and eyelashes, brain, larynx, tongue, breast, lungs, 
liver, legs, and arms, skin and hair; cursed be every thing liv- 
ing and moving in them from head to foot, etc. I conjure thee, 
Lucifer, and all your crew, by the Father, the Son and the Holy 
Ghost, by the incarnation and birth of Christ; I conjure thee by 
the power and the virtue of all saints, that thou never leave them 
in quiet, night or day, until thou have brought them to ruin, 
destroyed them by water, or led them to the gallows, or caused 
them to be torn by wild beasts, or their throat to be cut by ene- 
mies, or their bodies to be destroyed by fire," etc., etc. 



THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 83 

enecl earth and man with drought and pesti- 
lence; but the pope solemnly banished the 
forbidding omen, — and behold! in a short time 
it disappeared, having clay by day diminished 
through the power of the papal anathema. 
What a holy word may avail by virtue of its 
sound [flatus vocis) alone, is indicated in the 
legend of the tame starling, which was saved 
from the claws of the hawk just at the mo- 
ment its death-agony had forced from it the 
words it had learned to repeat " Ave Maria. 77 
Upon the power of the word as its founda- 
tion, rests the papal custom of consecrating 
bread, wine, oil, salt, tapers, water, bells, 
fields, meadows, houses, standards and weap- 
ons. u With such abuses, such superstition, 
and diabolical arts was the priesthood filled 
during papal ascendency ' 7 — thus complains 
an old Protestant theologian who had an eye 
to that surplus of magic which the Catholic 
Church possessed over and above that of the 
Lutheran, but who was blind to the com- 
mon welfare — "and therefore such things 
are in vogue even among common men. 



84 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

What was the chief thing in the mass if not 
the wonder-working words of blessing, when 
the priest pronounced the four words or the 
six syllables ' Hoc est corpus meum 1 (this is 
my body) over the bread, breathed upon 
it, and made the sign of the cross three 
times over it, pretending that the bread was 
thereby converted into the flesh of Christ? 
In the same way he transformed the wine in 
the chalice into the blood of Christ, though 
no such power is given to syllables and 
words. He bound the Holy Ghost in the 
water, the salt, the oil, the tapers, the spices, 
the stone, wood or earth, when he conse- 
crated churches, altars, churchyards, when 
he blessed the meat, the eggs, and the like, 
and when on Easter Eve he consecrated the 
fire that it should do no damage (though I, 
God save me, have found out that our vil- 
lage was utterly consumed four clays after 
such consecration), when he baptized and 
sanctified bells that their ringing might dis- 
pel evil influences, quiet tempests, and the 
like/ 7 



THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 85 

The organization of monasteries is to be 
regarded as the defensive system of the 
Church, guarding and protecting the terri- 
tory it has conquered from the devil. As 
the Mongolian on his irruption into En- 
rope found innumerable steeps crowned with 
strongly fortified castles, the very number of 
which deterred from any attempt at siege, 
so Satan and his hosts find the Christian 
world strewn with spiritual strongholds, each 
of which encloses an arsenal filled with 
mighty weapons for offensive as well as de- 
fensive warfare. Every monastery has its 
master magician, who sells agni Dei, con- 
ception-billets, magic incense, salt and tapers 
which, have been consecrated on Candlemas 
Day, palms consecrated on Palm Sunday, 
flowers besprinkled with holy water on As- 
cension Day, and many other appliances be- 
longing to the great magical apparatus of 
the Church. 

This consecrated enginery being so vari- 
ous and complete, it might have been ex- 
pected that the people would be content, 



86 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

and seek no further expedients than these 
constantly at hand. But, alas ! a people's 
magic of infernal origin is abroad, and ram- 
pant by the side of the holy magic of the 
Church- and by it Satan tempts the careless, 
the curious and the irresolute. Even many 
priests are tainted with it. The holy Boni- 
face, and many popes and monkish chron- 
iclers after him, bitterly lament that the 
lower clergy compound love - potions and 
practice divinatory arts, using even the holy 
appurtenances of the Church, as the host, to 
fortify the efficacy of their diabolical charms. 
Since the Church tries to reduce all con- 
ditions of life to harmony with itself, it nat- 
urally follows that it sets its seal also to 
human jurisprudence. The ordeals which it 
has found employed by some of the nations 
it has converted, exactly suit its system. It 
receives them, consequently, as resting on a 
right idea, 12 makes them what they were not 
before, a common practice, and gives de- 

12 A biblical ground for ordeals was found in Numbers v. 
12-28. 



1 



THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 87 

tailed rules concerning the chants, prayers, 
conjurations and masses with which they 
should be accompanied. When a person un- 
der accusation or suspicion is to undergo the 
ordeal by water, for example, the priest is to 
lead him to the church, and cause him kneel- 
ing to pronounce three formulas in which 
God is implored for protection. Then follow 
mass and the holy communion. When the 
accused receives the wafer the priest says: 
" Be this flesh of our Lord thy test to-day. 7J 
Then in solemn procession the throng of wit- 
nesses repair to the spot where the test is to 
take place. The priest conjures the water, 
expelling the demons common to this ele- 
ment,' and commands it to be an obedient 
instrument of Grod for revealing innocence 
or crime. The accused is dressed in clean 
garments, kisses the cross and the gospel, 
recites a Paternoster and makes the sign of 
the cross. Then (in the ordeal by hot water) 
his hand is held in a boiling cauldron : or he 
is thrown with his hands pinioned and a 
rope about his waist, into a river. If he 



88 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

does not then sink, his guilt is proved. The 
ordeal by fire consists in walking over glow- 
ing coals, or carrying red-hot iron, or in 
being dragged through flames clad in a shirt 
saturated with wax. By the test of fire the 
genuineness of relics is also sometimes tested. 
When in a. d. 1010 some monks who had 
returned from Jerusalem exhibited the towel 
with which the disciples had wiped the feet 
of Christ, some doubts of its genuine charac- 
ter were raised, but were all removed by 
this test. One of the most common of all 
ordeals is the duel. 

God, invoked by the servants of the 
Church, keeps his protecting hand over in- 
nocence. Every doubt of this truth argues 
faint-heartedness bordering on atheism. This 
thought lies at the foundation not only of the 
different kinds of ordeals, but also of the tor- 
ture, which, constantly extended and intensi- 
fied under the auspices of the Church, was a 
form of trial sparing the judge much labor, 
and leading to the goal more surely than the 
collation of testimony, which, besides being 



THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 89 

irksome, hardly ever brings full assurance. 
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego felt no 
pain in the fiery furnace. God gives to in- 
nocence upon the rack, if not insensibility 
to pain, at least strength to endure it. But 
even the arch-fiend, to a certain extent, can 
protect his subjects. In the case of heretics 
and witches it is therefore needful to resort 
to the intensest torture; to exhaust, so to 
speak, to the last drop, the springs of pain 
in human nerves, under the hand of skilled 
tormentors. If then the instruments of tor- 
ture are previously conjured and sanctified 
by the priest, and if he stands at the side of 
the accused ready to interrupt with constant 
question the diabolic formulas of alleviation 
which undoubtedly the sufferer murmurs in- 
wardly, then a candid and reliable confession 
may reasonably be expected, in spite of all 
efforts to the contrary by the devil. In the 
"Witch-hammer" (Malleus Malificarum) the 
ecclesiastical and magical plan of justice cele- 
brates its triumph. This work, bearing the 
sanction of the pope, contains full directions 



90 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

for the judge presiding in witch- trials. It is, 
in fact, a hammer which crushes whatever 
it falls upon. The judge who carefully fol- 
lows these directions may be confident that 
Satan himself can not save any one who is 
under accusation; only God and his holy an- 
gels can rescue him, by direct miracle, from 
death in the flames. 13 

He who finds a judicial system which ap- 
peals constantly to the intercession of God 
of questionable value, may consider that the 
history of the Church, the experiences of its 
saints and servants are a succession of divine 
miracles. God is not chary of his miracles 
when recognized, and the servants of the 
Church are in possession of the apostolic 
power and mandate to perform them. 

Another question is, how are the divine 
miracles to be distinguished from the infer- 
nal ? All attempts of the acutest scholastics 

13 The " Witch-hammer " will be more fully described here- 
after. The student of history should not neglect this volume, 
which is the ripest fruit of Catholic dualism, and clearly shows 
the results to which it tends. 



THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 91 

to establish a rule of definite separation for 
these two kinds of miracles hare failed. 
They are revealed under identical forms, 
and even the moral perceptions can detect 
no difference, since Satan is able to trans- 
form himself into an angel of light. Rea- 
son must also acknowledge its incapacity 
even in this respect, and rely on the Holy 
Ghost ever active in the Church and es- 
pecially in its head. The power of divine 
truth and inspiration which was poured out 
upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost, 
has been transmitted like a magnetic stream 
from Peter, the first bishop of Rome, to his 
successors by the laying on of hands, and 
is in a certain measure imparted, by the 
sacrament of ordination, to every member 
of the clerical hierarchy. 



The survey of the magic of the Church 
which has been presented above, ought per- 
haps to be completed, not by pursuing the 
tedious path which lies before us through 



92 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

continued description of ecclesiastical customs 
and opinion, but by simply formulating the 
general truth : Every symbol, every external to- 
ken, to which is attributed an independent power 
for sanctification and an immediate moral influ- 
ence, is Magic. May the Protestant reader, 
for whom we are here writing, examine with 
this maxim in how far the Reformation, which 
aims to restore to internal authority — the rea- 
son and free-will of the individual — its rights, 
has succeeded in its task. Luther and Calvin 
assailed many magical usages, and pruned 
many branches from the tree of dualism, but 
still allowed its vigorous trunk to remain 
unscathed. But a dualistic religious system 
must, on account of the unreasonable cosmi- 
cal theory on which it rests, sooner or later 
attack again the inner authority and make 
itself the sole and absolute external one. It 
must of necessity degenerate to a statuary 
fetichism or fall before a complete unitarian 
reformation. Our day witnesses the conflict 
between these opposite ideas. On the one 
side, the belief in a personal spiritual adver- 



THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH. 93 

sary of mankind, preached to the masses from 
a thousand pulpits, hangs suspended like a 
sword of Damocles over the head of civiliza- 
tion; on the other side, philosophy and the 
science of nature diffuse a rational and unita- 
rian theory of the universe and human exist- 
ence through a constantly enlarging circle. 
To him who wishes to take part in this all- 
important struggle, we would commend these 
words of the noble Bunsen : u " Wherever in 
religion, or state, or civilization, in art or 
science, the inner is developed more strenu- 
ously, and the spiritual earnestly sought after, 
be it with more or less transformation of what 
is existing, there progress is at hand • for from 
the inner, life comes to the external, from the 
centre to the circumference. There is also 
the way which leads to life. There new paths 
are opened to the soul, and genius lifts its 
wings with divine assurance. If this is true, 
the contrary must take place wherever the 
external life is more and more exalted, where 
the token supersedes more and more the es- 

" "Gott in der Geschichte," HI. 



94 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

sence, the symbol and the external work the 
inner act and conscience, where the superficies 
is taken for the content, the outer monotony 
for life's uniformity, and appearances for truth. 
There a luckless future is in waiting, what- 
ever be the aspect of the present." 



III. 

THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 

We find ourselves in a dismal labyrinth of 
narrow, winding streets, now and then issu- 
ing into some open space before a guild-hall 
or a church. The objects which meet our 
gaze in this strange city do not solicit pause 
or reflection; for we have seen essentially the 
same type of homes and humanity in many an- 
other city which we have wandered through 
in our search for the stone of wisdom. We 
therefore continue on our way. The build- 
ings of the university are said to be in the 
neighborhood, and we turn the corner to the 
right, and again to the left, until we come upon 
it. The lecture-hour approaches. Professors 
draped in stiff mantles and wearing the scholas- 
tic cap on their supremely wise foreheads, 
wend their way to the temples of knowledge 



96 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

at the portals of which flocks of students 
wait. We recognize their various and familiar 
types : the new-matriculated look as usual, 
their cheeks still retaining the glow of early 
youth, their hearts still humble, perhaps still 
held captive by the sweet delusion that the 
walls by which they wait are the propylsea to 
all the secrets of earth and heaven. Just as 
readily recognized are the parchment-worms, 
destined one day to shine as lights in the 
Church and in the domain of science, whether 
they now toil themselves pale and melancholic 
over their catence, their summce and sententice, 
or bear with unfeigned self-satisfaction the 
precious weight of terms which lifts them so 
conspicuously above the ignorant mass of 
mortals. And among the throng of the first 
named still fresh with youth, and these already 
dried pedants, we find also the far-famed third 
class of students, adventurers assembled from 
all quarters under the protection of univer- 
sity-privileges, — those gentlemen with beard- 
ed cheek, and faces swelled by drinking and 
scarred by combat, with terribly long and 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 97 

broad swords dangling at their side, — the 
heroes of that never ending Iliad which the 
apprentices of learning and the guilds enact 
nightly in the darkness of the lanes, who may 
yet turn out some day the most pious of con- 
ventical priors, the gravest doctors and the 
very severest burgomasters in Christendom, 
unless before that time they meet their fate 
upon the gallows, or on the field of battle, or 
as scholares vac/antes in the ditch or by the 
roadside. 

Shall we enter and listen to some of these 
lectures which are about to be delivered? 
Our letter of academic membership will open 
the doors to us, if we desire. To the left in 
the vaulted hall the professor of medicine 
has commenced his lecture. With astonish- 
ing subtlety and penetration he discusses the 
highly important question, before propound- 
ed by Petrus de Abano, but not as yet fully 
solved, — "an caput sit factum propter cerebrum 
vet ocnlos " (whether the head was formed for ' 
the sake of the brain or the eyes).- To the 
right the professor of theology leads us into 



98 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

one of the dim mysteries of the Church by 
ventilating the question what Peter would 
have done with the bread and wine, had he 
distributed the elements while the body of 
Christ in unchanged reality was yet hanging 
on the cross.* A little farther on in this 
mouldy vault we find the workshop of phi- 
losophy, where a master in the art of ab- 
stract reasoning deduces the distinction be- 
tween universalia ante rem and universalia in 
re. In yonder furthest room a jurisconsult 
expounds a passage in the pandects. — Or per- 
haps you would rather not choose at all? 
You smile sadly. Alas ! like myself you have 
good reason for complaining with Faust : — ■ 

I have, alas! Philosophy, 

Med'cine, and Jurisprudence too, 
And to my cost Theology, 

With ardent labor studied through. 
And here I stand, with all my lore, 
Poor fool, no wiser than before. 

and if you add like him, 

Hence have I now applied myself to magic, 



* Yet in the days of Erasmus of Eotterdam the theologians 
were making great ado over this knotty problem. 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 99 

we shall bring back to our minds the ob- 
ject of our burning desires, the hope which 
cheers us that finally the veil will be torn 
from the face of the Isis-image, and that we 
shall behold the unspeakable face to face, 
even though her looks burn us to ashes. 
Let us turn our back upon this tragi-comic 
seat of learning, where, as everywhere else, 
hoary-headed fools are teaching young chick- 
en-heads to admire nonsense, and young ea- 
gle-souls to despair of knowledge. It is not 
far hence direct — as direct as the winding 
lanes permit — to that great magician who 
has taken up his abode in this city. At the 
feet of that master let us seat ourselves. 
"We shall there slake our burning thirst with 
at least a few drops of that knowledge which 
through by-gone ages has been flowing in a 
subterranean channel, though from the same 
sources as the streams of Paradise. And if 
we are disappointed there, — well, then you, 
if you so choose, can quench your longing 
for truth in the whirlpool of pleasure and 
adventure. / shall go into a monastery, 



100 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

seek the narrowest of its cells, watch, pray, 
scourge forth my blood in streams; or I shall 
go to India, sit down upon the ground and 
stare at the tip of my nose, — stare at it and 
never cease, year out and year in, until all 
consciousness is extinguished. Agreed, then, 
is it not? ...... 

We are arrived in the very loneliest quar- 
ter of the town, and the most dreary limits 
of the quarter, where old crumbling houses 
group themselves in inextricable confusion 
along the city wall, and from their gable 
windows fix their vacant, hypochondriacal 
looks upon the open fields beyond. A tow- 
er, crowning the wall of the fort upon this 
side, now serves the great scientist as an 
observatory and dwelling, given him by the 
burgomaster and the council of the city. 
He was for a long time private physician to 
the Queen of France, but has now retired 
to this lonely place from the pleasures, the 
distinctions, and the dangers of life at court, 
in order to devote himself quietly to research 
and study. He has a protector in the prince- 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 101 

archbishop resident in the city; and as the 
professor of theology has certified at the re- 
quest of this same prince-bishop to his strict 
orthodoxy, the city authorities thought to 
persuade him to receive the honorable and 
lucrative position of town -astrologer, not 
heeding the assertion of the monks that he 
was a wizard, and that his black spaniel 
was in reality none other than the devil 
himself. 

A magician never suffers himself to be in- 
terrupted in his labors, whether engaged in 
contemplating the nature of spirits, in watch- 
ing the heavens, or in the elaboration of the 
quinta essentia, the final essence, with his cru- 
cibles. Oh ! what world-wide hopes, what 
solemn emotions, what inexpressible tension 
of soul must accompany these investigations ! 
Gold, which rules the world, here falls from 
the tree of knowledge as a fruit over-ripe into 
the bosom of the master. And what is gold 
with all the power it possesses, and all the 
enjoyment it commands, compared with the 
ability to control heaven and earth and the 



102 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

spirits of hell, compared with the capacity to 
summon by the means of lustrations, seals, 
characters and exorcisms the angels hover- 
ing in the higher spheres, or tame to obedi- 
ence the demons which fill the immensity of 
space ? And what again is this power com- 
pared with the pure celestial knowledge to 
which magic delivers the key ? a knowledge 
as much transcending the wisdom of angels as 
the son's place in his father's house is supe- 
rior to a servant's ! Perchance the magician 
at this very moment is deeply absorbed in 
some investigation, and within a hair's breadth 
of the revelation of some new and dazzling 
truth. Let us consider before we venture to 
ask admittance. Let us pause a moment be- 
fore this iron-bound door, and recover our 
breath. 

Ye men of science in this nineteenth cen- 
tury, how miserable you would be had you 
not once for all determined to limit your 
hopes to a minimum ! To die when you have 
gleaned and contributed but a single straw to 
the harvest of science, is the fate to which 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 103 

you subject yourselves. The one among you 
who has brought to notice a hitherto unknown 
snail or flower, deems himself not to have 
lived in vain. To have discovered a formula 
under which a group of phenomena can be 
arranged, is already a triumph. This resig- 
nation which makes each one among you, 
even the greatest, only an insignificant detail- 
worker upon the immense labor whose com- 
pletion you contemplate at an infinite remove, 
and the very outlines of which you ignore, — ■ 
this resignation is sublime, though supremely 
painful to the aspiring soul. The individual 
laborer for his part abstains from all hope of 
seeing the whole truth, and works for his gen- 
eration and futurity. Even the philosopher 
who undertakes to explain the framework of 
the macrocosm, does not see in his system a 
final solution of the ' ' problem of cosmical ex- 
planation," but only a link in the long chain 
of development. He foresees the fall of his 
theories, satisfied, perhaps, if the traces of his 
error keep his successor on a straighter path. 
It is the race and not the individual which 



104 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

works in your work; which continues it when 
you have grown weary and been forgotten. 
It is a collective activity like that of ants and 
bees. But the magician stands alone ! To 
be sure he receives what the past may offer, 
■ — but only to enclose himself with this treas- 
ure, and improve it by the immense wealth 
of his own mind. He believes in this immen- 
sity. He believes that the powers of all the 
generations are stored up in the bosom of the 
individual, and he hopes to accomplish alone 
what you faint-heartedly leave to the multi- 
tude of incalculable centuries ! 

We knocked upon the door ponderous 
with its bolts of iron. It opened as by an 
unseen hand. No servant interposed either 
welcome or remonstrance as we mounted the 
dark spiral stairs. Unannounced we entered 
the hall of the great magician. Along the 
arched ceiling of the rooms whose green lead- 
fastened window panes admitted but a scanty 
light, floated a fragrant vapor from the cell 
in the extreme background, where we could 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 105 

see the magician himself clad in a snow-white 
mantle reaching to his feet, and standing sol- 
emnly beside an incense-altar. Upon his 
head he wore a diadem on which was en- 
graved the unspeakable name, Tetragram- 
maton, and in his hand he held a metallic 
plate which, as we soon learned, was made 
of electrum and signed with the signatures 
of coming centuries. 

We paused and stammered a word of ex- 
cuse for the interruption we had caused him. 
A smile of satisfaction broke upon his face 
when he had momentarily surveyed us, and 
he bade us welcome. 

"You are the very persons whose arrival 
I have' been expecting, and whom it has cost 
me much trouble to summon,' 7 he said. "You 
are the spirits of the nineteenth century, con- 
jured to appear before a man of the fifteenth. 
You are called from the ante-chambers where 
the souls of the unborn await their entrance 
upon earth. But the images of the century 
to which your future mortal life belongs 
dwell in the depths of your consciousness. 



106 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

These images you shall show me. It is for 
this that I have summoned you, for I wish 
to cast a glance into the future." 

I was seized with a strange, almost horrid 
feeling. I now remembered that I and my 
companions had transported ourselves, by the 
use of means which stirs up the entire re- 
productive forces of the imagination, from 
the actual nineteenth century, back to the 
long-past fifteenth, that we might see it live 
before our eyes, not in dissevered traits as 
a past age is wont to be preserved in books, 
but in the completeness of its own multi- 
formity. Who was right, the magician or 
myself? Which was the one only seemingly 
living, he or I ? At what hour did the hand 
on the clock of time point at that moment ? 
Granted that time is absolutely nothing but 
a conceptual form without independent re- 
ality; as long as I live in time I believe in 
its ordered course, and do not wish to see 
its golden thread entangled. I did not wish 
that the spirit which I had summoned should 
be my master and degrade me to a product 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 107 

of his own imagination. I summoned cour- 
age and exclaimed: — ■ 

"We have wandered through many cities, 
great magician, to find you. We finally 
stand in this your sanctuary. We see these 
gloomy Gothic arches over our heads ; we 
see your venerable figure before us; we be- 
hold these folios and strange instruments 
which surround you ; we look out through 
these windows and behold on one side towers 
and house-tops, on the other fields, meadows 
and the huts of serfs, and yonder in the dis- 
tance the castle of a knight who is suspected 
of night-attacks upon the trains of the mer- 
chants as they approach the city. All these 
things stand real and present before our eyes: 
but, nevertheless, great magician, it is all. 
yourself included, a product of our magic, of 
the power of our own imagination, not of 
your magic. It is in order to make some ac- 
quaintance with the latter that we are come. 
It is not we who are to answer your ques- 
tions, but you ours." 

The magician smiled. He persisted in his 



108 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

view, and I in mine. The contested ques- 
tion could not be decided, and it was laid 
aside. But along with my consciousness of 
belonging to a period of critical activity, my 
doubts had awakened — my vivid hope a mo- 
ment ago of finding in magic the key of all 
secrets, was fast fading away. 

I looked around in this home of the ma- 
gician. On his writing-desk lay a parchment 
on which he had commenced to write down 
the horoscope of the following year. Be- 
side the desk was a celestial globe with 
figures painted in various colors. In a win- 
dow looking towards the south hung an as- 
trolabe, to whose alidade a long telescope (of 
course without lenses) was attached. The 
book -case contained a not inconsiderable 
number of folios : Versio Yulgata, some vol- 
umes of the fathers, Yirgil, Dionysius Are- 
opagita, Ptolemy, the hymns of Orpheus, 
Hermes Trismegistus, Jamblichus, Pliny's 
Natural History, a large number of works 
partly in Arabic upon astrology and alchemy, 
also a few Hebrew manuscripts, and so on. 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 109 

These and other such things were to be 
found in his observatory, which was also his 
studio and sleeping-room. Next to the ob- 
servatory was the alchemical laboratory with 
a strangely appointed oven filled with sin- 
gular instruments reminding me again of 
Faust's complaint: — 

3f)r Snftrmttente fretltcfj foottet mem, 
2fttt 9iab mtb $ammcn, SSalj mtb 33iigcl. 
3% ftaub am £l)or, iljr fotitct ©dpffet fern; 
3inareuer53artift!rau§,bod)t)cbt3^mcI)t bte 9ticcjct. 

While we lingered here our host informed 
us that for the present he had suspended 
his experiments in alchemy. He hoped to 
find his quinta essentia by a shorter process 
than the combination of substances and dis- 
tillation, which had exhausted already so 
many investigators and led so few to suc- 
cess. He acknowledged that he had him- 
self advanced no farther in the art of the 
adepts than the extraction from ' ' philo- 
sophic earth" mixed with "philosophic wa- 
ter " of just so much, and no more, gold 
than he had employed at the beginning of 



110 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

the experiment.* In spite of this, however, 
he worked daily before his oven, melting and 
purifying such metals as he needed for his 
planet-medallions, amulets and magical rings, 
and above all in preparing that effective alloy 
which is called electrum. 

From his laboratory our host conducted us 
into two other apartments with arched ceil- 
ings, forming a sort of museum of most ex- 
traordinary curiosities, — skeletons and dried 
limbs of various animals : fishes, birds, liz- 
ards, frogs, snakes, etc.; herbs and differently 
colored stones; whole and broken swords; 
nails extracted from coffins and gallows ; 
flasks containing I know not what, — all ar- 
ranged in groups under the signs of the 
different planets. We beheld before us the 
wonderful and rich apparatus of practical 
magic arranged according to rules of which 
we were entirely ignorant, — rules which we 
had vainly sought in all the treatises of 

* This confession Cornelius Agrippa makes in his "Occult 
Philosophy." Theophrastus Paracelsus and others were less 
modest. 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. Ill 

modern times upon the occult sciences of 
the Middle Ages, rules which might per- 
haps contain the simple principles underly- 
ing their confusion. 

Evening was drawing on. The sun was 
sinking behind the western hills. It was 
beginning to grow dark among the arches 
where the great magician had imprisoned 
himself among dead and withered relics, — ■ 
fragments broken from the great and living 
world without. We returned to his observ- 
atory. He opened a window and contem- 
plated with dreamy glances the stars which 
were kindling one after another in the heav- 
ens. The twilight is a favorable time for 
conversation of the kind for which we had 
been preparing ourselves. We were soon 
settled in comfortable, roomy arm-chairs and 
discoursing earnestly, — we, the man of the 
fifteenth century, and the unborn souls of 
the nineteenth, whom he had summoned that 
he might look into the future, and who now 
used him to look back into the past. He 
spoke to us of his science 



112 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

"My knowledge is not of myself. Far, 
far away behind these hills, behind the snowy 
summits of the Alps, behind the mountains 
of the ' farthest- dwelling Garamantes/ on 
nameless heights which disappear among 
the clouds, the temple of truth was built 
long ago over the fountain from which 
life flows. That this temple is demolished 
we well know; only the first human pair 
has wandered through its sacred halls. But 
he who desires, who yearns and has pa- 
tience, can sit down by the margin of the 
stream of Time and grasp and draw ashore 
some of the cedar-beams from the ruined 
temple drifting upon the billows, and from 
the form of the fragments may determine 
the structure of the whole. All wisdom has 
its roots in the past, and the farther we 
penetrate antiquity, the richer the remains 
we find of a highest human wisdom. What 
is Albertus Magnus with his profound knowl- 
edge in comparison with the angelic wisdom 
of Dionysius Areopagita, and what is the 
latter compared with that of the prophet 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 113 

who denounced his woes over Nineveh and 
Babylon? And yet these divinely commis- 
sioned men would gladly have been taught 
by the seventy elders who were allowed with 
Moses to approach the mountain where God 
chose to reveal himself, there receiving the 
mystic knowledge of the Cabala. On Sinai, 
however, God's secret was veiled in clouds, 
lightnings and terror; Moses himself was per- 
mitted to see him only 'from behind/ — cl'd 
not obtain a morning-knowledge (a knowl- 
edge a priori, an analogy- seeking pupil of 
Schelling would have called it), but an even- 
ing-knowledge (knowledge a posteriori, he 
would have added). The morning -knowl- 
edge was shown only to the man of the 
dawn of time and was extinguished at the 
first sin. From that time every successive 
generation has deteriorated from its prede- 
cessor : 

'"Aetas parentum, pejor avis, tulit 
Xos nequiores, mox daturos 
Progeniem vitiosiorem,'' 

and with the darkness of sin reason is plunged 

8 



114 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

into constantly blacker depths. The individ- 
ual seeker after truth may gain enlighten- 
ment, but for himself alone, not for hu- 
manity. Therefore a magician confines the 
wisdom he acquires to his own bosom, or 
imparts it to a single pupil, or buries it 
under obscure expressions which he commits 
to parchment; but he neither can nor will 
impart it without reserve to humanity whose 
path appears to lead downward into a con- 
stantly deeper night. 

"Even the theologians speak of the pris- 
tine wisdom, — the theologians with whom 
we, who practice the occult science, agree far 
more than the simple and suspicious among 
them think. What remained, in the time of 
Noah, of pristine wisdom was saved with 
him in the ark. His first-born obtained as 
his portion the fairest wisdom. Prophecy, 
the Cabala, and the Gospel belong to the 
sons of Shem, the Jews. But even Ham 
and Japhet were not left destitute. It was 
the priest of the sons of Ham that guarded 
the secrets of Isis, — secrets before which even 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 115 

we Christians must bow in the dust; for the 
Old Testament does not hesitate to exalt 
the wisdom of the Egyptians and recognize 
Moses as a pupil from their school. Hermes 
Trismegistus was an Egyptian, and we ma- 
gicians who know that he transmuted what- 
ever he chose into gold and precious stones, 
are not astonished when the apostle Paul 
speaks of the treasures of Egypt, or at what 
travellers relate of its pyramids and other 
giant works, or when Pliny estimates the 
number of its cities at twenty thousand, or 
when Marcellinus is amazed at the immense 
treasures which Cambyses carried away from 
it, for all this was a creation of the art of 
Hermes Trismegistus.* Even the portion of 
the children of Japhet was not insignificant. 
It was divided between the treasury of Zo- 
roaster and that of the Eleusinian mysteries. 
Some coins of this treasure fell into the 



* Thus reasoned, as late as the middle of the sixteenth 
century, Borrichius (Olaf Borch), who was professor in chemis- 
try at the University of Copenhagen and wrote a book upon 
the wisdom of the Egyptian Hermes. 



116 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

hands of Plato and Aristotle and have from 
them come into the possession of Porphyrins, 
Jamblichus, and the theosophists and scho- 
lastics. It is this diffused illumination — that 
of the Bible (its inner, secret meaning) the 
Cabala and fragments of Egyptian, Persian 
and Grecian wisdom — which are collected 
and united in the magic of learning. These 
are the ancestors of my science. Has it not 
a pedigree more noble than that of any royal 
family ? 

"I heard you mention something about the 
necessity for a science of investigation with- 
out presupposition. Would you then really 
presume to be the judge of all that past 
generations have thought, believed and trans- 
mitted as a sacred inheritance to those that 
follow ? Do you not shrink before the idea 
that human hunger for truth must have been 
satisfied from Adam to our own days by 
nothing but illusions ? that you are the chil- 
dren and children's children of mere idiots 
who have fixed their hopes, their faith, and 
their convictions on baseless falsehoods? Put 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 117 

your godless plan of investigation to the test! 
Do it openly, and the theologians will burn 
you ! Do it in secret, and you will finally 
crave the stake as a liberator from the ter- 
rible void such a science would leave in your 
own soul ! No, the magician believes just as 
devoutly as the theologian. Only in the mel- 
low twilight of faith can he undertake those 
operations whose success is a confirmation of 
the truth of his faith. Or do you require 
stronger corroboration of the genuineness of 
his tenets than what I find when I read in 
these stars which wander silently past my 
window, the fates of men, and see these fates 
accomplished; when, with the potency of 
magical means, I summon angels, and de- 
mons, and the souls of dead and unborn men 
to reveal themselves before my eyes, and 
they appear ? 

"I confess that our science, if it is looked 
at only on the surface, resembles a variega- 
ted carpet with artfully interwoven threads; 
but as only a limited number of manipula- 
tions is required to produce the most re- 



118 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

markable texture, so it is also but a few 
simple thoughts which support all the doc- 
trines and products of magic. 

" That the universe is a triple harmony, 
as the Godhead is a Trinity, you are aware. 
We live in the elemental world ; over our 
head the celestial space, with its various 
spheres, revolves ; and above this, finally, 
God is enthroned in the purely spiritual 
world of ideas. The unhappy scientists of 
your century have in their narrow prejudice 
separated these worlds from one another (but 
by crowding together the celestial and the 
elementary). Your so-called students of na- 
ture investigate only the elementary world, 
and your so-called philosophers only the 
ideal ; but the former with all their delving 
in the various forms of matter, never reach 
the realm of the spiritual, but are rather 
led to disavow its existence ; and the latter 
can never from the dim world of ideas sum- 
mon up the concrete wealth of nature. In 
vain your students of nature imagine that in 
physiology, or your philosophers that in an- 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 119 

thropology, they shall find the transition 
from one world to the other. "We magi- 
cians, on the contrary, study these worlds 
as a unit. We find them combined by 
two mighty bonds : those of correspondence 
and causality. All things in the elementary 
world have their antitype in the celestial, 
and all celestial things have their corre- 
sponding ideas. These correspondences are 
strung from above downwards as strings on 
the harp of the universe, and on that harp 
the causalities move up and down like the 
fingers of a player. While your students of 
nature seek the chains of causality in only 
one direction, the horizontal, that which runs 
through things on the same level, that which 
connects things in one and the same elemen- 
tary world ■ we, the students of magic, search 
with still greater diligence those perpendicu- 
lar chains of causality which run through and 
combine corresponding objects in the three 
worlds. Our manner of investigating this 
perpendicular series resembles your method 
of examining the horizontal but slightly, if 



120 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

at all. What unnecessary trouble your in- 
duction causes you ! You wish to investigate 
the nature of some manifestation of force, 
for instance; you analyze it with great pains- 
taking into different factors, you strive to 
isolate each of these factors and to cause 
them to act each its own part, to find out 
what each has contributed to the common 
expression of force. We meet with no such 
hindrances. A secret tradition has presented 
to us our perpendicular lines of causality 
almost entire, and we are able to fill up the 
lacunse of this tradition by an investigation 
which is not impeded with any great diffi- 
culties. This investigation relies on the re- 
semblances of things, for this similarity is 
derived from a correspondence, and causality 
is interwoven with correspondence. Thus, 
for instance, we judge from the resemblance 
between the splendor of gold and that of the 
sun that gold has its celestial correspondence 
in that luminary, and sustains to it a causal 
relation. Another example : the two-horned 
beetle bears a causal relation to the moon, 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 121 

which at its increase and wane is also two- 
horned; and if there were any doubt of this 
intimate relation between them, it must van- 
ish when we learn that the beetle hides its 
eggs in the earth for the space of twenty- 
eight days, or just so long time as is re- 
quired for the moon to pass through the 
Zodiac, but digs them up again on the twen- 
ty-ninth, when the moon is in conjunction 
with the Sun.* Do not smile at this method 
of investigation ! Beware of repeating the 
mistake which ' common sense ' is so prone 
to make in seeing absurdities in truths which 
happen to be beyond its horizon ? Our 
method is founded on the idea that there 
is nothing casual in nature. To be sure 
we accept a divine arbitrament, but by no 
means a natural fortuity. Not even the 
slightest similarity between existing objects 
is a meaningless accident ! Not even the 
slightest stroke in the figures by which we 
fix our words and thoughts in writing is 
without deep significance. Every thing in 

* Agrippa: "De Occulta Pliilosophia," 1. I., c. 24. 



122 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

the work of nature and of man lias its cause 
and its effect. We can not make a gesture, 
nor say a word, without imparting vibrations 
to the whole universe, upward and down- 
ward, — vibrations which may be strong or 
feeble, perceptible or imperceptible. This 
principle runs through the whole of our cos- 
mical system, and this thought must be true 
even for you analyzers. 

"Before explaining more fully the magi- 
cal use of our series of correspondence and 
causality, I wish to show you a couple of 
them. I shall choose the simplest, but at 
the same time the most important. I com- 
mence with 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 



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124 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

"Here you see one of the nets which magic 
has stretched from the Empyrean down into 
the abyss. For each of the sacred numbers 
there is a separate scale of the same kind: 
'The universe/ says Pythagoras, 'is founded 
upon numbers/ and Boethius asserts that 
'Every thing created in the beginning of 
time was formed according to the relations 
of certain numbers, which were lying as 
types in the mind of the Creator.' It is 
consequently a settled fact with us that num- 
bers contain greater and more effective forces 
than material things; for the former are not 
a mixture of substances, but may, as purely 
formal entities, stand in immediate connec- 
tion with the ideas of divine reason. This 
is recognized also by the fathers : by Hie- 
ronymus, Augustine, Ambrosius, Athanasius, 
Bede, and others, and underlies these words 
in the book of Revelation : ' Let him who 
hath understanding count the number of the 
beast.' Those varied and relatively discord- 
ant objects which form a unity in the same 
world, are arranged side by side in the 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 125 

scale; whereas those things which in different 
groups or different worlds correspond to one 
another, form the ascending and descending 
series. 

"Do not forget that correspondence also 
implies reciprocal activity ! Thus, for in- 
stance, the letter n in the holy name of G-od 
indicates a power which is infused into the 
successive orders of Seraphim, Cherubim and 
Thrones, and which is imparted through them 
to the constellations Leo and Sagittarius, and 
to the two wandering luminaries Mars and 
the Sun. These angels and stars all pour 
down into the elementary world the abun- 
dance of their power, which produces there 
fire and heat, and the germs of animal or- 
ganisms, and kindles in man reason and faith, 
in order to meet finally in the lowest region, 
its opposites : cold, destruction, irrationality, 
unbelief, represented by the names of fallen 
angel-princes. I will now show you another 
table which is an introduction to the study 
of Astrology and treats more in detail of cer- 
tain parts of the preceding, showing how 



126 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

things in the elementary world and micro- 
cosm are subject to the planets. In show- 
ing this to you I will remind you of the 
verse : 

1 Astra regunt hominem; sed regit astra Deus.' 
(Ike stars guide maw, but God guides the stars.) 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 



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128 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

"The value of these, as of many other ta- 
bles, will be clear to you when I now pro- 
nounce the first practical principle of magic: — 

11 As the Creator of the universe diffuses upon 
us, by angels, stars, elements, animals, plants, 
metals and stones, the powers of his omnipo- 
tence, so also the magician, by collecting those 
objects in the elemental world which bear a re- 
lation of mutual activity to the same entity (an 
angel or a planet) in the higher worlds, and by 
combining their powers according to scientific 
rides, and intensifying them by means of sacred 
and religious ceremonies, is able to influence 
this higher being and attract to himself its 
powers. 

' ' This principle sufficiently explains why I 
have collected around me all the strange 
things you here see. Here, for instance, is 
a plate of lead on which is engraved the 
symbol of a planet ; and beside it a leaden 
flask containing gall. If I now take a piece 
of fine onyx marked with the same planet- 
symbol, and this dried cypress-branch, and 
add to them the skin of a snake and the 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 129 

feather of an owl, you will need but to look 
into one of the tables given you to find that 
I have only collected various things in the 
elementary world which bear a relation of 
mutual activity to Saturn ; and, if rightly 
combined, can attract both the powers of 
that planet, and of the angels with which it 
is connected. 

" The greatest effect of magic — at the same 
time its triumph, and the criterion of its 
truth — is a successful incantation. Shall we 
perform one ? If we go through all the nec- 
essary preparations, we shall have a bird's- 
eye view of the whole secret science. Only 
certain alchemists have a still greater end 
in view ; they aspire to produce in the re- 
tort man himself, — nay, the ' whole world. 
You men of the nineteenth century know 
only by reputation of our attempts to pro- 
duce an homunculus, and a perpetuum mobile 
naturce. Could you only count the drops of 
perspiration these efforts have wrung from 
us ! There is something enchanting, some- 
thing overpowering, in alchemy. It is gigan- 



130 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

tie in its aims, and in its depths dwells a 
thought which is terrible, because it threat- 
ens to crush that very cosmic philosophy on 
which our faith is founded. We occupy our- 
selves with the elements, until the idea steals 
upon us that every thing is dependent on 
them ; that every thing, Creator and created, 
is included in them ; that every thing arises 
by necessity and passes away by necessity. 
If you can only collect in the crucible those 
elements and life-germs which were stirring 
in chaos, then you can also produce, in 
the crucible, the six days of creation, and 
find the spirit which formed the universe. I 
have abandoned alchemy only to escape this 
thought; but a parchment will, sealed with 
seven seals, and hidden in the most secret 
corner of my vaults, contains the remarka- 
ble experiences I have had when experiment- 
ing for the perpetuum mobile and homunculus* 

* We have found in a " Magia Divina" the following direc- 
tions for accomplishing a perpetuum mobile naturce, the efficacy 
of which we leave for the reader to decide. 

"During the twelve nights after Christmas 1| measures of 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 131 

"But to the preparations for our con- 
juration ! First we are met with the ques- 
tion : Is the hour favorable ? Do the aspects 

dew are collected from fruit-trees, and preserved well enclosed. 
In the month of March dew is again collected from both fruit- 
trees and meadows and is preserved in another phial. Dew 
collected in May is poured in a third and rain of a thunder- 
storm during the summer in a fourth. Thereupon the contents 
of the four phials are mixed and one measure of it is poured into 
a great transparent glass retort where, well covered, it must re- 
main a month until it becomes foul. Put it then over fire and 
subject to heat of the second degree. When sufficiently distilled 
a substance thick as honey is left. In this residue are poured 
four grains of astral tincture. The mixture is exposed to a heat 
of the first degree, by which it is converted into a thick, jet- 
black lump which again is dissolved, forming below an ink-like 
fluid, and above a vapor, in which many colors and figures are 
seen. These soon disappear, and every thing is changed into 
water, which begins to turn green, and green palaces, constantly 
enlarging, and mountains and lovely pastures appeiir, while the 
water is diminished more and more. When now you find that 
no more dew rises from the earth within the glass, take the 
water which you received from the distillation, mix with it a 
drachm of astral tincture and pour an ounce of this mixture 
into the glass bulb. Then every thing begins again to live and 
grow. Add every month an ounce of this mixture. If then the 
glass ball is well closed, and is not stirred, a vapor gradually 
arises, and is condensed into two shining stars, like the sun 
and the moon, and like the latter, one of these stars waxes and 
wanes ; and all the phenomena of nature, thunder, lightning, 
hail, rain, snow and dew, will appear in your glass ball as in 



132 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

oppose ? Aspect is the relative position of 
two planets to each other. Every calendar 
from the centuries which lie between you 

the real world around you. All this will happen if you keep 
the great Creator before your eyes and in your heart, and if 
you conceal from the wicked world this great secret." 

From the second part of Goethe's Faust the reader may re- 
member Doctor Wagner, Faust's former famul us, busily engaged 
at the alchemic furnace in preparing a homunculus, an artificial 
man. The same "Magia Divina" from which we have quoted 
the preceding directions, allows us also to trace the secret of the 
learned Wagner: the art of producing "homunculos philosophi- 
cos." In a retort of the most beautiful crystal glass is poured 
one measure of the purest May-dew, collected when the moon 
is crescent, and two measures of blood from a youth, or three 
measures from a girl. Both the boy and the girl must be 
hale and, "if possible," chaste. When this mixture has fo- 
mented during a month, and been transformed into a reddish 
clay, the menstruum which is formed on the top is drawn off 
by means of tubes hermetically attached to the retort, gathered 
into a clean glass vessel, mixed with one drachm animal tinc- 
ture, and the mixture is again poured into the retort where it is 
kept during a month in gentle heat. A sort of bladder will have 
then formed which is soon gradually covered with an organic 
net of little veins and nerves. Sprinkled every fourth week 
with the menstruum above quoted, the bladder grows during four 
months. When now you notice a peeping sound and move- 
ments of vitality in the glass, look into it and you will discover 
to your joy and amazement a most beautiful pair, a boy and a 
girl, which you can contemplate with heart-felt admiration for 
this lovely work of nature, though their height is but six inches. 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 133 

and me speaks of these aspects : of the con- 
junction of the planets (when they are on 
the same meridian, and consequently sepa- 
rated by no angular distance); their opposi- 
tion (when in a directly opposite part of 
the heavens); their quadrature (distance of 
90°), trigon (120°), and hexagon (60°). If the 
blood-red Mars, or the pale Saturn stand in 
quadrature or in opposition to one another, 
or to any of the other wandering stars, this 
portends destruction. But to-day both these 
planets are harmless ; the aspects are good, 

They move and walk about in the glass, where in the midst 
there is a tree growing with all kinds of pleasant fruits. If now 
you pour into the retort every month, two grains of animal 
tincture, you can keep them alive six whole years. When one 
year old they can inform you of many secrets of nature. They 
are benevolent in their disposition, and obey you in every thing. 
But at the end of the sixth year you will find that this beau- 
tiful pair who have eaten hitherto of all kinds of fruit, except 
those growing on the tree which sprang up in the midst of the 
retort, now begin to eat also the fruit of that. Then a vapor 
is found in the retort, which grows denser, assumes a blood-red 
color and emits flashes. The two homunculi are terrified, and 
try to hide themselves. Finally every thing around them is 
parched, they die, and the whole is changed into a fuming 
mass. If the glass is not very large and strong it explodes, 
causing great damage. 



134 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

and Mars itself being in the first ' face ' of 
its own house,* is consequently even kindly 
disposed. Even the moon, whose assistance is 

* Every planet had among the twelve signs of the Zodiac its 
own house, and it was especially propitious when in any of 
those abodes. The following table shows the order: — 

Saturn dwells in Capricornus. 

Jupiter " " Pisces and Sagittarius. 

Mars " " Aries and Scorpio. 

The Sun " " Leo. 

Venus " " Taurus and Ursa Major. 

Mercurius " " Virgo and Gemini. 

The Moon " " Cancer. 
Each of the twelve signs (thirty degrees on the arc of the 
heavens) was divided into three "faces" (ten degrees). The 
position of the planet was most auspicious when in the first 
face of the house; if in the third its favorable influence was 
doubtful. 

As the reader will see from the first table given above, the 
signs of the Zodiac were supposed to sustain a relation to the 
elements and to temperaments. Aries, Leo and Sagittarius 
were warm, dry, fiery and choleric. Mars entering these signs 
—excepting that of Aries which was his own house, in which 
he was auspicious — must therefore bode draught, conflagration 
and pestilence. Taurus, Virgo and Capricornus, were cold, dry, 
earthy, melancholic. Saturn in the second sign of Taurus might 
consequently betoken a severe winter. The signs of Cancer, 
Scorpio and Pisces were cold, damp, watery and sanguine. The 
dominion of the Zodiacal constellations over the human body 
was divided as follows: Aries presided over the head and face, 
Taurus over the neck and throat, Gemini over the shoulders, 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 135 

needed, is in the house of a friendly star, and 
in a favorable quadrature to Jupiter. Here 
we meet consequently with no hindrances. It 
remains, however, on the side of Astrology 
to find out what planets are the regents of 
the present year. In other words, what 
planets form the first aspect of the year. 
Look here in my calendarium. Mars was 
one of them. This suits us all the better 
as to-day is Tuesday, Mars' own day, and 
as the hour will soon be here which, on 
this clay, he presides over absolutely.* It 

arms and hands, Cancer over the breast, ribs, lungs and spleen, 
Leo over the upper part of the stomach, back and side, Virgo 
over the lower part of the stomach and intestines, Scorpio over 
the generative organs, Sagittarius over the anus, Capricornus 
over the 'knees, Aquarius over the thighs, Pisces over the feet. 
The planets exercised the same influence as their houses, and all 
elementary things subordinated to a planet were considered to 
be, during auspicious aspects, excellent remedies for affections 
in the limbs presided over by that planet. The series of analo- 
gies, of which we have given an example above, were therefore 
inexhaustible mines even for the physicians of the Middle Ages. 
Since, for instance, Capricornus which presided over the knees, is 
the house of Saturn, and all crawling animals are connected with 
this planet, the fat of snakes is an effective remedy against gout 
in the knees, especially on Saturday, the day of Saturn. 

* The days bear yet, in many languages, the names of the 



138 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

is therefore of importance that we use in 
our incantation the martial part of my magi- 
cal apparatus. Among the elements fire is 

planets which were assigned to them in gray antiquity by 
Astrology. 

Sunday, dies Solis, is the day of the Sun. 

Monday, dies Luna?, is the day of the Moon. 

Tuesday, dies Martis, is the day of Mars, i. e., Tiw. 

Wednesday, dies Mercurii, is the day of Mercury. 

Thursday, dies Jo vis, is the day of Jupiter, i. e., Thor. 

Friday, dies Veneris, is the day of Venus, i. e., Freja. 

Saturday, dies Saturni, is the day of Saturn. 
The original names seem to have been introduced by the Ro- 
mans during the later period of the republic. That the idea is 
derived from Egypt is shown by a passage in Dion Cassius [1. 
XLIIL, c. 26; compare E. Roth, " Geschichte userer abendland- 
ischer Philosophic," I., pag. 211]. The question when and 
how they were introduced by our forefathers will perhaps re- 
main forever a matter only of conjecture. It has caused as- 
tonishment that the order in which the days were named 
after the planets, though the same with all nations, is not 
the order in which they were supposed to be placed in the 
universe (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury and 
the Moon). This riddle is solved by the passage in Dion Cassius 
referred to, in a manner such that the astrological origin of this 
nomenclature must be undoubted. He relates, namely, that the 
Egyptians devoted every one of the twenty-four hours to a cer- 
tain planet. The first hour of the first week-day (Saturday) was 
given to the uppermost planet, Saturn, the second to Jupiter, 
the third to Mars and so on, according to the order of the plan- 
ets. The 24th hour of Saturday consequently fell also to Mars, 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 137 

martial. We shall therefore kindle a fire upon 
this altar. Among the planets, the thorny, 
poisonous and nettle-like are martial. We 
shall therefore feed this fire with dry twigs 
and rose-bushes. Among the animals the 
ferocious and bold are connected with the 
blood-red star. Here you see three belts of 
lion's hide fringed with the teeth of tigers, 
leopards and bears, and provided with clasps 
of iron, because iron is the martial metal. 
Let us fasten those belts, when the time 
has arrived, about our waists. Among the 
stones the diamond, amethyst, jasper and 
magnet are martial. I show you here three 
diadems which, though of pure iron, sparkle 

and the first hour of the succeeding day to the Sun, by which 
that day was therefore named Sunday. The 24th hour of Sun- 
day falls according to the same calculation to Mercury, and the 
first hour of Monday to the Moon; and so on. The astrological 
distribution of the hours between the planets according to their 
successive order in the heavens thus explains the apparent dis- 
order which occurs in the week. In the magical works by Cor- 
nelius Agrippa, Peter de Albano and others, of which the author 
has availed himself, tables concerning the distribution of the 
hours are found. These writers have collected from all quarters, 
and not least from Ptolemy and the Alexandrians, materials for 
their magical apparatus. 



138 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

with these stones, and are furnished with the 
signs and signatures of our planet. Here 
you have three iron staves marked with the 
same signs : we must bear them in our hands. 
These breast-plates studded with amethysts, 
whose Hebrew inscriptions and characters re- 
fer to the same stars, we must wear over our 
hearts on the outside of the white clothing 
which we shall put on before our incantation 
begins. Here again you will notice three 
diamond rings : we shall wear them on our 
middle finger during the solemn and awful 
moment for which we are preparing. These 
two bells we place on the table; one of a red- 
dish alloy and furnished with iron rings, sum- 
mons the martial spirit hither, the other made 
of electrum magicum (i. e., a proportional al- 
loy of all metals with some astral tincture 
added), serves to call celestial reserve-forces 
of all kinds, if needed. Further, we require 
these breast-plates and these rings of elec- 
trum, which do not bear the name of any 
planet, but the glorious and blessed name of 
God himself, as a protection for the conjurers 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 139 

against the conjured spirit. Who he is we 
shall soon find. Observe here, further, a ter- 
rible arsenal which is also necessary for our 
purpose. Mars is the star of war, murder 
and passion. The demons of Mars have a 
corresponding nature, and there exists be- 
tween them and the tools by which their 
work on earth is accomplished, a power 
of attraction. Therefore we have here this 
heavy sword with which the magic circle is 
to be drawn ; we therefore place in rows 
these skulls and bones which have been col- 
lected in places of execution, these nails, ex- 
tracted from gallows, these daggers, knives 
and axes rusty with stains of blood. We 
must not forget the incense which was kindled 
on the altar shortly before the first citation. 
There is a different kind of incense for every 
planet and its demons. That appropriate for 
Mars is composed of euphorbia, bdellium, am- 
moniac, magnet, sulphur, brains of a raven, 
human blood and the blood of a black cat.* 

* The prescriptions for these perfumes are found in Cornelius 
Agrippa ? s "Occulta Philosophia, " 1. I., c. 4A. 



140 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

It is highly important that the quality of 
this incense should be genuine. I might 
quote what Porphyrins says upon this point; 
but confine myself to pointing out that it 
has an influence on the conjurer as well as 
upon surrounding objects. It saturates both 
the air and the breast of the conjurer with 
substances that are connected with the planet 
and its demons. It draws down the conjured 
being and intoxicates him, as it were, with 
divine influences, which act on his mind 
and imagination. As a matter of course we 
must prepare besides, such implements as are 
needed in every incantation without bearing 
any relation to any certain planet. To them 
belong amulets inscribed with the names of 
seraphs, cherubs and thrones, and with sen- 
tences from the Bible and the sacred books 
of Zoroaster. To them belong further the 
magical candlestick of electrum with seven 
branches, every branch bearing the sign of 
a planet ; and above all the pentagrams, 
those figures with fine points which no de- 
mon can overstep. We shall place the latter 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 141 

as a line of fortification around the magic 
circle, and we must be sure that no one of 
the points is broken. Inside the circle be- 
tween the table, the seven-armed candlestick 
and the incense-altar there is room for the 
tripod with the bowl of holy water and the 
sprinkler. 

''Having thus made the necessary prep- 
arations for our feast, let us think of the 
guest who is to be invited. 

"The air of the evening is cool. I close 
the window, move my study lamp to this 
table, and ask you to be seated around it. 
We must consult concerning the invitation, 
in which we must follow the directions given 
in this' cabalistic manuscript. 

1 ' You have found from the table I first 
showed you that it is the orders of Seraphim, 
Cherubim and Thrones which are related by a 
reciprocal activity to Mars. But these three 
orders constitute the highest celestial hierar- 
chy, which remain constantly in the presence 
of Grod and must not be summoned hither 
even if we were able to do so. We may only 



142 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

implore their assistance. The orders of Do- 
minions, Powers and Empires are the only in- 
telligences connected with the stars. Among 
them we must address ourselves to the spirits 
of Mars, since Mars is the regent of this year, 
this day and of the intended incantation. 
The choice between the good and the evil spir- 
its ruled by Mars is still open ; but since it 
is not our purpose to invoke by supplica- 
tion but to compel by conjuration, we must 
choose the wicked. This is no sin : it is only 
danger. It gives joy to the good angels to 
see the power of God's image over their ad- 
versaries. But we can not force the whole 
host of Mars' demons to appear in our circle. 
We must select one only among their legion 
and this one must be well chosen. It is 
therefore necessary to know his name, for 
with spirits, far more than men and terres- 
trial things, the name implies the essence 
and the qualities of the named. The Cabala 
teaches us the infinite significance of words 
and names. It proclaims and demonstrates 
the mysteries which dwell in all the holy 






THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 143 

names of God ; it reveals to us the mysteries 
in the appellations of angels ; it shows us 
that even the names of men are intimately 
related to the place in creation and the tem- 
poral destiny of those who bear them. Even 
names of material things show, though less 
distinctly, a connection between the sound 
and the thing itself or its nature. Who can 
hear, for instance, the words wind, or swing, 
without perceiving in the very sound some- 
thing airy or oscillating ? Who can hear 
stand, and strong, without perception of some- 
thing stable and firm ? 

' ' Let us hasten to find the name of the 
demon who is to be summoned. Astrology 
as well as the Cabala gives various methods 
for this purpose.* Let us choose the sim- 
plest, which is perhaps also the most efficient. 

"I must commence our work by point- 
ing out the significance of number 72. To 
this number correspond the seventy-two lan- 
guages, the seventy-two elders of the syn- 

* They are found in Agrippa's " Occulta Philosophia, " 1. III. 
cc. 25, 26, 27, 28. 



14 i THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

agogue, the seventy- two interpreters of the 
Old Testament and the seventy-two disciples 
of our Lord. This number is also closely 
connected with the sacred number twelve. 
If the twelve signs of the Zodiac are divided 
into six parts, we obtain the seventy-two so- 
called celestial quinaries, into which the sev- 
enty-two mystical names of God, his ' schem- 
harrvphoras? infuse their power and which 
are each of them presided over by an angel- 
prince. The same number also corresponds 
to the joints of the human frame; and there 
are many other correspondences. 

"Well, while the Cabalists were searching 
out the sacred inner meaning of the Bible; 
while they proceeded slowly, starting with the 
'In the beginning/ and stopping at every 
word, every letter, and found in every word 
and every letter a mine of secrets,* they finally, 

* Many pages could be filled with subtle speculations over 
the word Bereshit, the first word in the Old Testament. That 
the sensual world is only a secondary world, a reflex of the 
ideal world, the Cabalists proved by showing that Holy Writ 
commences not with the first but with the second letter of the 
Alphabet, namely 3 (b), which in its form is half a square 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 145 

after the lapse of centuries, came as far as to 
the 19th verse in the 14th chapter of Exodus, 
commencing: 'And the angel of God, which 
went before the camp of Israel arose.' 1 The 
cabalistical rule which says wherever, in the 
Bible, an angel is spoken of, there is also 
the name of an angel hidden among the He- 
brew letters of the verse, admonished them 
to pause and consider. They had at first no 
idea of the extraordinary discovery they were 
now on the point of making. But their at- 
tention was attracted by the fact that there 

[found in. the number of the world], and therefore signifies an 
accomplished separation between spirit and matter, between 
good and evil. By a transposition of the letters in Bereshit, in 
accordance with the method of the Cabala, two other words are 
obtained which mean "in the first Tishri," showing that the 
world had been created in the month of Tishri (September). 
The sum of the numerical value of the letters in the word Be- 
reshit equals the sum of the numerical value of the letters in two 
words which mean "He created by the law,"— a proof that the 
law is the instrumental cause of the world. Further, Bereshit can 
be divided so as to form two words meaning "He created six" 
(six days, six millenniums, the six extensions of universal space, 
etc.); or, "He created a ram," which was, according to the He- 
brew Cabalists, the same ram that was sacrificed instead of Isaac, 
and the Christians add, the same "Lamb of God" which gave 
itself a sacrifice for man. 
10 



146 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

were seventy-two letters in the verse (in the 
Hebrew text). Still more surprised were 
they when they found that even the follow- 
ing verse, the 20th, contained exactly sev- 
enty-two letters; and then surprise grew into 
awe when even the 21st verse showed the 
same number. In the Bible there is no for- 
tuity : a great secret was hidden here. Fi- 
nally, by placing the three verses, letter by 
letter (the middle verse written from left 
to right, the others conversely), above one 
another, G-od's seventy -two mystical names 
' schemhamphoras ; each consisting of three 
letters, from the three verses, was discov- 
ered. These names, provided with the suf- 
fix el or jah, are also the names of the sev- 
enty-two quinary angels, of which God has 
said that his name is in them. 

"Here in this cabalistic manuscript these 
names are preserved. Let us select one of 
them at random. My eye happens to fall 
upon Mizrael first. We will take that. This 
high name of an angel which we may not 
invoke, will give us the key to the name of 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 147 

the demon which is to appear presently. 
Here is the table that will help us. The 
three root-consonants of the word Mizra(el) 
correspond to three others in the planet Mars, 
which contain the name — let us pronounce it 
silently, let us merely whisper it, for it is the 
name of the desired demon — Tekfael! * 

"The sum of the numerical value of the 
letters in this name is 488. A remarkable 
number, every figure reminding us of the 
mystical four, of the elements and of their 
correspondences ! We shall commune with 
one of the mightiest and most terrible among 
the demons. On the waxen tablet with an 
iron frame, I now inscribe the name of the 
demon, adding the number 488, and these pe- 
culiar strokes which make up his signature. 
Time does not allow me to tell you now the 
rules by which the signature is formed from 
the name.f 

* The table from which, the author has amused himself in ex- 
tracting, according to the rules, this name, is found in "Oc- 
culta Philosophia," 1. IIT. c. 26. 

f Agrippa's book gives the subtle rules for finding the "signs" 
or the signatures of the demons. — The reader must remember 



148 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

"The preparations are now completed, it 
only remains to order the apparatus, and 
to array ourselves. When we have put our 
implements in order, consecrated the room, 
cleansed ourselves by a bath, put on the 
white robe, wrapped a red mantle around (for 
red is the color of Mars), buckled the girdle of 
Mars about our waists, assumed the diadem, 
the breast-plates and the rings, I kindle on 
the altar my magical light, and the fire for 
incense, and draw the magical circle. Then 
an intense prayer for the protection of God, 
then the incantation. 

"Here is the conjuration-book, the so-called 
Conjurer of Hell. I open at the page on which 
the martial incantations begin. The book 
is placed within the circle. When needed, I 
grasp it with the left hand; I hold the staff 
with my right." 

The Grothic room in which the incantation 
was to take place, presented a strange and at 
the same time solemn and awful aspect. The 

the part played by the "signs" of microcosmos and the earth- 
spirit in Goethe's Faust. 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 149 

magician had arranged with practiced hand 
the things before mentioned. The skulls, the 
bones of men and beasts, the murderous weap- 
ons and the martial essence-flasks, the various 
and indescribable fragments from all the king- 
doms of nature formed, nearest to the walls, 
different figures, triangles, squares and penta- 
gons. Red drapery was hung over the naked 
walls. In the midst of the room and inside 
the circularly arranged pentagram were the 
fire and incense-altar with holy water. On a 
table in the rear, but partly within the circle, 
the magical lights were burning, and diffused 
an uncertain whitish - yellow light over the 
objects. Near the candlestick were the two 
bells. We were arrayed in our garments. 
The face of my companion was pale as death: 
probably mine also. 

" Courage, fortitude! . . or you are 
lost ! " whispered the magician, whose eye 
beamed with a dark, solemn determination, 
and whose every feature expressed at this 
moment a terrible resolution. 

These were his last words before the incan- 



150 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

tation. We were allowed to answer nothing. 
I tried to be courageous, but my soul was sha- 
ken by a dreadful expectation. The prayer 
and religious ceremonies which we had per- 
formed after the bath and change of dress, 
had not diminished but only intensified this 
feeling. 

The night wind shook the windows hidden 
behind the heavy draperies. It seemed as if 
ghosts from another world had been lurking 
behind the gently waving curtains. 

Even the skulls appeared to me to bode 
from their sunken, vacant eyes, the arrival 
of something appalling. One of them at- 
tracted my attention for a long time, or 
rather exercised on me the same influence 
which the eye of the rattle-snake is said to 
have upon the bird which he approaches to 
devour. I noticed in the eye a metallic lus- 
tre. It was the gleam of the light reflected 
from a martial stone fastened in the skull. 

In the mean time the magician had seized 
the blood-stained sword, and drew, murmur- 
ing a prayer the while, a threefold magical 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 151 

circle around the pentagram. Between the 
circumferences he wrote the names of the an- 
gels of the year, the season, the clay and the 
hour. Towards the east he made the sign 
of Alpha, towards the west of Omega. Then 
he divided the circle by a cross into four 
fields. He assigned two of them, those be- 
hind him, to me and my companions. They 
were large enough to kneel upon. We were 
strictly enjoined not to leave them, not to 
allow even a fold of our mantles to wave 
outside the circle. Forge tfulness in this re- 
spect would cost us our lives. The magician 
put aside his sword in a triangle outside of 
the circle. He sprinkled himself and us with 
holy water, read formularies over the incense 
and the thorn twigs, and kindled them. This 
was the sign for us to give ourselves to 
prayer. We must not cease praying until 
we had heard the first word of the incanta- 
tion. The incense spread, as it were, a dim 
transparent veil over the room. Here and 
there it was condensed into strange figures : 
now human, now fantastic animal shapes 



152 THE MAGIC OF THE _ MIDDLE AGES. 

arose against the vaulted wall and sank 
again. 

There must have been something narcot- 
ical in those vapory clouds. I looked at 
them in a half dreaming state while my lips 
repeated inaudibly the enjoined prayers. 

I was aroused from this condition by the 
first word of the incantation which struck my 
soul like a thunder-bolt, and awakened me 
to full consciousness of my position and of 
the significance of the hour. The blood in 
my veins seemed changed to ice. 

The magician stood before me, tall, erect 
and commanding. He had taken the incan- 
tation-book and now read from it with a hol- 
low voice the first citation, which begins with 
a long formulary invoking the different mys- 
tical names of G-od. 

I can not repeat the quotation. The high- 
est and the lowest, the divine and the infer- 
nal, that for whose sacredness we feel an 
irrepressible reverence and that for whose 
impiety we experience the deepest horror, 
were united here in the most solemn and the 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 153 

most terrible words that human tongue has 
ever stammered. Now first I began to form 
an idea of the power of words. 

The name of the demon was not yet ut- 
tered. The nearer the moment for its pro- 
nunciation approached, the deeper became the 
voice of the magician. Now came the for- 
mula of invocation, and now — resounded the 
name Tekfael. 

It appeared as if a thousand-fold but whis- 
pering echo from the vault above, from the 
corners of the room, from all the skulls and 
from the very incantation -book itself, re- 
peated that name. 

The magician became silent, the incense 
was condensed and assumed a reddish tint 
which gradually became more and more dif- 
fused. We seemed to hear the thunder roll- 
ing, at first from a distance, then nearer, 
finally over our heads. It was as if the 
tower had been shaken and the vault over 
our heads been rent. My knees trembled. 
Suddenly a flash of lightning shot through 
the red mass. The magician extended his 



154 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

staff, as if lie had wished to stop it. He 
raised his voice anew, strong and powerful 
amidst the continued peals of thunder. The 
smoke grew thin again ; from its wreaths 
there appeared before the magician in the 
immediate vicinity of the circle, and at the 
opposite end of his staff, a dim apparition, a 
figure whose first aspect bereft me of my 
reason. I felt as if I had fallen to the floor, 
■ — as if I had been lost 

I awakened with the perspiration of agony 
on my forehead, but fortunately in my own 
bed and in the nineteenth century. The 
view from my window is cheerful and en- 
livening. I see a river which bears proud 
ships, quays swarming with men, and broad 
streets with houses in a graceful and light 
renaissance style. I lived again in the pres- 
ent which pleased me the best, next to 
dreaming of the future 

They strove for something great, however, 
those learned magicians of the Middle Ages. 
Theirs was a mighty imaginative creation. 
It lies in ruins never to arise again; but the 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 155 

crumbled debris testify to the belief in an 
all-embracing human power and knowledge. 
These learned magicians were likewise rest- 
less Faust-natures, as distinct from the usual 
type of the learned of their time as Faust from 
the pedantic ^/oss-proud, unaspiring milk-sop 
Wagner. "While they paid their tribute of 
weakness to tradition, and formed their sys- 
tem on received dicta, it was among them 
that presentiments of the future began to 
stir, and a longing for a clearer light than 
that with which the scholastics and doctors 
angelici et seraphici felt themselves well con- 
tented. When the study of ancient Greece 
was recommencing, when the dawn of the 
renaissance appeared, it was these enthusi- 
astic natures, still groping among the dreams 
of magic art, that first began to awake and 
think. It was a feeling of the insufficien- 
cy of the ruling theology and scholasticism 
which had driven them into the temple of 
"secret philosophy.' ' Since its pillars were 
brought from diverse spheres of culture, dis- 
trust and fear of maoic had become more 



156 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

universal than directly ecclesiastical; they had 
drunk as deeply from profane tradition as 
from Christian, considering them both to flow 
from the same divine source : their writers 
quote Porphyrius by the side of John, and 
the pretender Hermes by the side of Paul. 
The courage with which they tried to burst 
open the portals of the spirit -world served 
them afterwards when from the shores of 
their childhood's belief they were to venture 
out on the ocean of thought. Campanella, 
Yanini, Giordano Bruno, and Cardanus stand 
on the dividing line between dogmatico-fan- 
tastical magic and a philosophy in the sense 
of the old Greeks and of modern times. If 
already previously some magicians of the old 
type had died from persecution, it was not 
to be wondered at that such u atheists" as 
Yanini and Bruno must now ascend the pile. 
The occult sciences of the Middle Ages 
with their origin not from paradise and 
Noah's ark, as believed by their adherents, 
but from an ancient Oriental culture and 
with their power over even the strongest 



THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED. 157 

and most independent souls that could arise 
under the influence of a Church which levels 
all thought, may properly remind those who 
are willing to forget it, of a sad but incon- 
testable truth: That humanity may embrace 
during the course of many and long centuries 
with the most candid faith, and construct 
with immense labor into a system, dogmas 
which hare been received without question- 
ing, and which contain more of the false than 
of the true, the great antiquity of which does 
not give them more claim for validity than is 
possessed by the error which arose yesterday 
and vanished to-day. No special divine in- 
fluence has saved or will save the generations 
from inheriting the errors less than the ac- 
quired truths of their predecessors — no other 
divine influence, I should say, than the im- 
pulse we feel to think for ourselves in order 
to attain to clearness. 



IV. 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE AND THE STRUGGLE 
OF THE CHURCH AGAINST IT. 

Wherever religious thought divides the em- 
pire of the world and humanity into two ab- 
solutely opposed powers, a good and an evil, 
there it also distinguishes two kinds of magic: 
the divine and the infernal. So with the 
Persians who knew a white and a black 
magic. So also in the Middle Ages of 
Christianity. The Greeks, on the contrary, 
knew nothing of this distinction. The world 
being to them a harmonious whole, both in 
moral and physical respects, magic was with 
them only a means of finding out and using 
the secret powers in the harmonious cosmos; 
and the wonder-worker who could not be 
thought of as deriving his powers from an 
evil source, was undoubtedly a favorite of 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 159 

the gods and an equal with the heroes, not 
unworthy of statues and temples, if he used 
his art for the benefit of humanity. For the 
rest, magical speculation was with the Greeks 
more and more pushed aside by philosophy, 
— by scepticism and rational investigation, 
until on account of the nearer contact be- 
tween Europe and Asia, after the death of 
Alexander, it began again to exercise its in- 
fluence, and finally celebrated its triumph in 
that clualistic form of religion which by the 
name of Christianity took possession of the 
Occident. 

The struggle which the spirit of oriental- 
ism waged on its march through Europe, 
first against the Hellenic paganism, and then 
against the Christian paganism which had 
penetrated into the Church itself, has been 
briefly sketched above. When Christianity 
had spread later among, the Germanic and 
Slavic nations, there arose a new process of 
attraction and repulsion between it and the 
natural religions of the barbarians, the ele- 
ments of which were partly blended with it 



160 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

and partly repelled by it. The gods were 
transformed into devils, but their attributes 
J and the festivities in their honor were trans- 
ferred to the saints. Pope Gregory the Great 
ordained that the pagan festivities should be 
changed only gradually to Christian, and that 
they were to be imitated in many respects.* 

In the time of Boniface there were many 
Christian priests in Germany who sacrificed to 
Thor and baptized in the name of Jesus at 
the same time. Of especial influence on the 
rapid spread of Christianity was the maxim 
of Gregory not to be particular in the choice 
of proselytes, because hope was to be placed 
in the better generations of the future. To 

* Since they (the newly converted Anglo-Saxons) are accus- 
tomed to slaughter many oxen and horses in their feasts to the 
honor of the devils (their ancient gods) it is necessary to allow 
this custom to remain, but based upon another principle. 
Thus there must likewise be celebrated on the feast days of the 
Church and of the Holy Martyrs whose relics are kept in the 
churches built in heathen sacrificial groves, a perfectly similar 
festival, by enclosing a place with green trees and preparing a 
religious banquet. Still the animals must not be sacrificed to 
Satan's honor, but slaughtered to the praise of God and for the 
sake of food, for which the Giver of all good gifts must be 
thanked. 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 161 

be allowed to attend divine service, and to be 
buried in the churchyard, it was only neces- 
sary to have the benediction of the priest. 
Gifts to the Church, pilgrimages, self-scourg- 
ings, repeating of prayers in Latin, opened the 
gates of heaven to the proselytes easier than 
virtue and bravery those of Valhall to the 
heathen. For the rest the pagan could enter 
the community of the Church while retaining 
his whole circle of ideas. The Church did not 
deny, but it confirmed, the real existence of 
every thing which had been the object of his 
faith, but it treated these objects in accord- 
ance with its dualistic scheme, sometimes ele- 
vating them to the plane of sanctity, and 
again degrading them to something diabolical. 
Thus, for instance, it changed the elemen- 
tary spirits — which the Celts and Germans 
believed in — from good or morally indifferent 
natural beings into fallen angels, envying man 
his heavenly inheritance; and if a thinking 
heathen could before accept or reject the ex- 
istence of such beings at his pleasure, it now, 

when he had become a proselyte, became a 
11 



162 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

matter of eternal bliss to believe in them. 
There was no superstitious idea gross enough 
not to receive the signet of the Church; nay, 
the grosser it was, the more likely was it to be 
appropriated. Even so cultured an intellect as 
Augustine, the most prominent of the fathers 
and authors of his time, declared it to be "in- 
solent " to doubt the existence of fauns, satyrs 
and other demoniac beings which lie in wait 
for women, have intercourse with them and 
children by them.* Thus was laid the foun- 
dation of that immense labyrinth of supersti- 
tion in the darkness of which humanity has 
groped during the thousand years of the Mid- 
dle Ages. 

In the rupture between the Church and the 
natural religion of the northern peoples we 
find, in a certain sense, the same spectacle 

* " Oreberrima fama est multlque se expertos vel db eis qui experti 
essent, de quorum fide dubitandum non est, audisse confirmant, sil- 
vanos et faunos, quos incubos vocant, improbos scepe exstlUsse mu- 
lieribus et earum appetisse ac peregisse concubitum, et quosdam 
dcemones, quos Busios Galli nuncupant, heme assldue immunditiam 
et tentare et efficere plures talesque asseverant, ut hoc negare impu- 
dentlce videatur" (Do civitato Dei. lib. 15, cap. 23j. 

t 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 163 

repeated which we have seen in the struggle 
between the Christian and the Greco-Roman 
culture. If the Neoplatonieians held up their 
Appolonius of Tyana as a type of the Chris- 
tian sorcerers, Celts, Germans and Northmen 
had also then soothsayers endowed with su- 
pernatural powers whom the Christian mis- 
sionaries must excel in the power of working 
miracles, if they would gain consideration for 
the new religion. There are many accounts 
of bishops and priests who have worn gloves 
of fire, walked on white-hot iron, and so forth, 
before the eyes of the astonished heathen. 
If the miracles worked by the apostles of 
Christianity had their source in divine agen- 
cies, then those performed by its opponents 
must have their origin in the assistance of the 
devil. Already here the white magic stood 
opposed to the black magic, the immediate 
and supernatural power of God in His agents 
to the devil : and if the chief significance of 
the Church was to be an institution for de- 
liverance from the devil ; if all her magical 
usages from the sacrament to the amulet 



164 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

were so many weapons against his attacks; 
if the pagan religions which had succumbed 
to Christianity were nothing but varied kinds 
of the same devil-worship, and their priests, 
seers and physicians but tools of Satan; then 
it was natural for all traditions from the pagan 
time which the Church had not transformed 
and appropriated should be banished within 
the pale of devil-worship, and partly also that 
every act to which supernatural effects were 
ascribed, , but which was not performed by a 
Christian priest, or in the name of Jesus, should 
be referred to a black magic, partly in fine that 
the possibility of an immediate co-operation, 
a conscious league between the devil and men 
should be elevated to a dogma. 

A struggle between good and evil, between 
Glod and Satan, between church and pagan- 
ism, which is carried on with the weapons of 
miracles by two directly opposed human rep- 
resentatives of these principles, was a theme 
which must by necessity urge the power of 
creative imagination into activity, and we find 
also in one of the oldest monuments of Chris- 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 165 

tian literature* a tale of this character. It 
is Simon Peter, the rock on which the Church 
is built, who fights there against Simon the 
magician of Samaria, mentioned in the Acts. 
When the cities of Asia Minor had witnessed 
their emulation in miracle-working, the de- 
cisive battle was fought out to the end in 
Rome. In the presence of the assembled peo- 
ple, Simon the magician attempts an ascen- 
sion into heaven, but falls and breaks his 
legs because Simon Peter had commanded 
the evil spirits who were carrying the magi- 
cian towards the sky to let him drop. This fa- 
ble appears still further embellished in later 
ecclesiastical authors. It is soon accompanied 
by others, such as that of Cyprianus, Theoph- 
ilus, Militaris, Heliodorus, and many others, 
who from love of earthly glory abjure Christ 
and enter into solemn covenants with the 
devil. In the biography of the holy Basilius, 
archbishop of Csesarea and Cappadocia (he 
was- a contemporary of the apostate emperor 
Julian), there is a story of a young man who 

* " Recognition.es divi Clementis ad Jacob," lib. II. 



166 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

had obtained from a heathen sorcerer a let- 
ter of recommendation to Satan. When the 
young man, according to the precept of the 
magician, had gone to a heathen grave and 
there taken out the letter, he was suddenly 
taken up and borne to the place where Satan, 
surrounded by his angels, sat on a throne. 
The youth abjured in writing his baptism and 
swore allegiance to his new master. But 
after some time the apostate repented and 
confessed to the holy Basilius what he had 
done. The bishop prayed for him forty days. 
When at length the day had come that Satan 
according to the compact should bear away 
his victim, the bishop had the young man 
placed in the midst of his congregation. Sa- 
tan arrived: a battle between him and the 
bishop followed — a battle which was carried 
on with the j:>eople stretching forth their 
hands imploring God for assistance, and was 
ended when the compact fell from the claws 
of the fiend, and was torn by the bishop. 
The before-mentioned Theophilus had like- 
wise pawned his soul to the devil, but the 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 167 

contract was restored to him after urgent 
supplication, by the holy Virgin, after which, 
warned by his experience, he led a holy life, 
and became Saint Theophilus before he closed 
his eyes. These early legends of compacts 
between the devil and men end, as we see, 
with the sinner's salvation; not so the later. 
If we now remember that it was one of 
the dogmas proclaimed by the Church that 
all magical and miraculous arts not per- 
formed by the priests in the name of Jesus 
were wrought by the devil; that he gives his 
adherents power over nature and that the 
demons as " inciibi 11 and " succubi" seek and 
obtain carnal intercourse with human be- 
ings,* we discover already in the ideas of 

* This view is expressed already in Henoch's book and in 
the writings of the Eabbi. Like them even the fathers in- 
terpreted the "Sons of God" mentioned in Genesis who "were 
fascinated by the daughters of men" as fallen angels. Thus 
Cyrillus, Anthenagoras, Ireneeus, Lactantius, Turtullianus, and 
others. We have just instanced above a quotation from Augus- 
tine. The Greek mythology with its amours between gods 
and men was destined to give support to this superstition. — 
Luther, who could not free himself from the superstition of 
his time, tells us often in his "Tischreden" that the devil 



108 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

the first Christian centuries the elements of 
the sorcery of the Middle Ages. And when 
Ave read further the accusations which the 
first Christian sects hurled against one anoth- 
er, — when we learn that the party which was 
raised by the Council of Nice to the orthodox 
position accused the Gnostics, Marcionites 
and Arians of devil-worship, confederacy 
with Satan and sorcery, we meet already 
here that union of heresy and sorcery by 
which the Church of the Middle Ages ac- 
quired such a fearful weapon against dis- 
senters, — a union which must not be looked 
upon as a mere casual invention of wicked- 
ness and theological hatred, but as the nec- 
essary consequence of the whole dualistic 
theory of morals, as the necessary fruit of 
the belief in devils. 

A long time must have been required for 
the festivals common to the natural religions 

can beget children by connection -with human beings. "Es 
ist wahrlich ein gralilich, schrecldich Exempel," he says in 
one place, "dass der Teufel kann die Leute plagen, dass er 
audi kinder zeuget." 



THE MAGIC OF THE FEOTLE. 1G9 

of Europe to become extinct or be remodelled 
into Christian form. The external practices 
by which religious ideas obtain a sensuous 
expression, possess generally more tenacious 
power of existence than the ideas themselves, 
and continue in existence when these have 
disappeared, as the shell after the death of 
the nautilus. In certain religions of natural 
development adoration of the sun and the 
moon are the most important. Among the 
Celtic, Germanic and Slavic tribes, as before 
among Hebrews and Phoenicians, these di- 
vinities of the light were adored by kindling 
fires, by sacrifices and banquets on mountains 
and in groves, especially at the time of the 
vernal equinox (Easter), at the beginning of 
May (Yalpurge's night), and on the night of 
the summer solstice. From the fact that 
traces of the custom still exist in our own 
day, though its original significance is lost, 
we can all the more safely assume that it con- 
tinued to exist without interruption, openly 
at first, then in secret, retaining its signifi- 
cance, in spite of the efforts of spiritual and 



170 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

profane authorities to extirpate it, and as- 
suming more and more in the popular mind 
that character of devil-worship with which 
the Church has branded these reminiscences, 
from heathen times. And when finally it 
ceased entirely, or was changed into seasons 
of popular festivity which had no dangerous 
suggestiveness even in the eyes of the Church, 
still the remembrance of the demoniacal festi- 
vals of mountain and grove must have been 
inherited from generation to generation, and 
then it was but another step to believe that 
they still continued and were participated in 
by persons who practiced magical arts, and 
had been invested with the suspicious wisdom 
of the ancient valas and druids — the female 
seers and physicians of the pagans. That 
the notion of the Witches' Sabbath, which 
was celebrated on the night before the first 
of May, and of the paschal journey of the 
witches to Blokulla have this historical origin 
is very probable. The ecclesiastical litera- 
ture from the first half of the Middle Ages 
does not leave us without significant hints ap- 



THE MAGIC OF TEE PEOPLE. 171 

parently corroborating this opinion. St. Egid- 
ius, who died in 659 a. d., speaks frequent- 
ly against the Jire-worship, practiced during 
midsummer nights, which as inherited from 
pagan forefathers was accompanied with danc- 
ing, and against the invocation of the sun 
and moon (which he calls "the demons Her- 
cules and Diana"), and against worshipping 
in groves and by trees, springs and cross- 
roads. The apostle of the Allemans, St. Fir- 
minus, who died in 754 a. d., preaches against 
the same customs, and especially dwells on 
the pertinacity with which old women adhere 
to the infernal festivals with their magical 
songs and dances. Modern authors on the 
subject in question speak of a synodal decree 
which is said to date back to the council of 
Ancyra in 314 a. d., and which enjoins the 
bishops especially to watch the godless women 
who, deceived by the delusions of the demons, 
imagine that they traverse in the night, in the 
company of Diana and Herodias and riding 
on certain animals, wide tracts o-f country, 
and are required to assemble for a certain 



172 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

number of nights by the command of their 
mistress. But although this synodal decree 
is spurious and belongs to a far later period 
and a different locality (it is referred to for 
the first time in the ninth century, in a work 
composed by the Abbot Regino*), it is old 
enough to deserve our attention here. To 
the decree is appended a number of questions 
which the bishops must put to such women in 
confession. Among them are the following, 
which connect immediately the witch-journey 
with heathen traditions : — • 

"Have you followed the practice inherited 
from the heathen of considering the course 
of the stars, the moon and the eclipses of 
the new moon ? And have 3^011 imagined 
that by the exclamation ' Conquer, moon r 
(vince, Luna), you could reproduce its light ? 
When you wished to pray, have you resorted 
to other places than the church, as, for in- 
stance, to springs, stones, trees or cross- 

* Eeginonis libri duo de synodalibus causis et disciplinis 
ecclesiasticis. The work was republished in Leipzig in the 
year 1840. 



THE MAGIC OF THE FEOPLE. 173 

roads ? Have you there kindled fires and 
sacrificed bread or aught else ? ;; 

John of Salisbury, who died a. d. 1182, 
writes of women who, led by a " night- 
queen," assemble .and celebrate banquets at 
which they most relish children stolen from 
their cradles. He still supposed that this 
may not really be a fact, but only demoni- 
acal illusions, phantasmagorial tricks played 
by the devil, and empty dreams, especially 
as such things happen among women, and 
not among men, who possess a stronger rea- 
son. The same view of the case is held by 
William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris (died 
a. D. 1248). But already during the life 
of this prelate the belief in the reality of 
witch-feasts was sanctioned by the author- 
ity of Pope Gregory IX., and every doubt 
in regard to it was declared to be heresy. 

At the same time the connection between 
heresy and witchcraft was revived and con- 
firmed by the Church, so that all heretics 
were to be considered as the sworn subjects 
of the devil, and initiated into sorcery, even 



174 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

though not all sorcerers and witches were 
necessarily heretics. The Church at this time 
threatened by several newly arisen sects, had 
recourse to every expedient to uphold its 
hierarchy and the unity of confession. In 
the year 1223 Gregory IX. promulgated a 
letter which exhorted to a crusade against 
the Stedinghs, a sect which had spread 
themselves in Friesland and Lower Saxony. 
He accused them of worshipping and having 
secret communion with the prince of dark- 
ness. According to the papal edict the Sted- 
inghs considered the devil as the real and the 
good deity, expelled by the other and the 
evil from heaven, but returning thither in 
the fulness of time, when the usurper on ac- 
count of his extreme tyranny, cruelty and in- 
justice had made himself hated by the race of 
men and had finally become convinced of his 
own incapability and powerlessness. In truth 
if such a belief had sprung up it would not 
have been strange. Everywhere the power 
and the influence of the devil was seen, but 
nowhere Grod's, if not in the bloody and ter- 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 175 

rible laws and oppressive social system which 
were declared by spiritual and profane au- 
thorities to be divine. The very theory by 
which the Church sought to save for God 
his attribute of omnipotence — the theory of 
consent, according to which the devil exer- 
cises such power only by God's permission 
— this very theory was suited to augment 
the confusion and the terror. "Never," says 
Bunsen,* "has there been a time when a 
divine and universal government was so 
much despaired of as in the Middle Ages." 
Bunsen inclines to the view of the French 
historian Michelet, that from the thirteenth 
to the fifteenth century, after the Waldenses 
and Albigenses in France had been extermi- 
nated by Romish persecution, and the lower 
classes had been reduced to serfs, a religion 
of despair, a real Satanic cultus sprang up, 
and that the Witches' Sabbath was in fact 
founded upon nightly congregations, in which 
thousands of brutalized men driven by misery 
and oppression gathered themselves together 

* "Gott in der Geschichte ," HI. 



176 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

in order to worship the devil and invoke his 
aid. But there exists no absolutely certain 
historical fact to prove that such meetings 
have really taken place. We consider it 
more probable, as pointed out above, that 
the Witches' Sabbath was as it were the 
lingering twilight, constantly deepening, and 
constantly painted in more monstrous colors, 
after the day of the degraded festivals in 
the religion of nature, — an incubus of imagi- 
nation which oppressed the bosom of hu- 
manity buried in a world of dreams ; and 
that nothing more than the belief in its 
reality, which the Church sanctioned, was 
necessary to produce the phenomena we de- 
scribe. The Waldenses and the Albigenses 
were treated like the Stedinghs. " Let the 
judges know," writes an inquisitor, "that the 
sorcerers, the witches and the devil-workers 
are almost all Waldenses. The Waldenses 
are by profession, essentially and formally, 
devil- workers; and though not all conjurers, 
still conjuration and Waldenseism have much 
in common." The highest authorities of the 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 177 

Church constantly nourished that awe of the 
devil and his tools which filled the mind, 
and they could do it without scruple, being 
themselves seized by the same terror. Thus 
John XXII. promulgated, a. d. 1303, two let- 
ters, in which he complains that he himself, 
not less than countless numbers of his sheep, 
was in danger of his life by the arts of sor- 
cerers who could send devils into mirrors 
and rings, and make away with men by 
their words alone. He mentions especially 
that his enemies have sought to kill him by 
piercing dolls which they had baptized with 
his name by needles, invoking the aid of 
the devil. It is needless to point out what 
influence such proclamations from Christ's 
vicar, the infallible head of the Church, would 
exercise over the common mind. The dual- 
istic philosophy ripened more and more until 
that terrible crisis which broke out in the 
fifteenth century. That crisis was preceded 
by the trial of the Templars and by several 
great but local witch -processes, with subse- 
quent executions, until finally, Dec. 5th, 1484, 

19 



I 



178 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

the bull of Pope Innocent VIII. , "Ad fortu- 
ran rei memoriam," appeared. This bull with 
its companion, the "Witch-hammer" (Malleus 
Malificarum), composed by the monk and in- 
quisitor Sprenger, brought the evil to its 
climax. Hell was no longer a mere product 
of the imagination: we see it established on 
earth in dread reality and stretching its do- 
minion over all Christendom. 

Our space does not allow us to reproduce 
in a literal translation this bull of Pope Inno- 
cent, written in barbarous Latin worthy of 
its subject.* We must, however, give some 
account of its contents. "The serf of God's 
serfs " begins by testifying the care which 
as the guardian of souls he must exercise in 
promoting the growth of the Catholic faith 
and driving the infamy of heresy far from 
the proximity of the faithful. "But," he 
continues, "it is not without profound grief 
that I have learned recently that persons of 
both sexes, forgetting their own eternal wel- 

* It is found complete in its original form in Horst's 6l De- 
monomagie," II. 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 179 

fare and erring from the Catholic faith, mix 
/ with devils, with incubi and succubi, and in- 
jure by witch songs, conjurations and other 
shameful practices, revelries, and crimes, the 
unborn children of women, the young of ani- 
mals, the harvests of the fields, the grapes of 
the vineyards and the fruit of the trees; that 
they also destroy, suffocate and annihilate 
men, women, sheep and cattle, vineyards, 
orchards, meadows, and the like ; visit men, 
women, cattle and other animals with inter- 
nal and external pains and sickness ; prevent 
men from procreation and women from con- 
ception, and render them entirely unfit for 
their mutual duties, and cause them to re- 
cant, besides, with sacrilegious lips, the very 
faith which they have received in baptism." 
. . The pope therefore appoints his beloved 
sons, the professors of theology Henry In- 
stitor and Jacob Sprenger, to be prime in- 
quisitors with absolute power over all dis- 
tricts which are contaminated with those 
diseases ; and since he knows that there are 
persons who are not ashamed to insist upon 



180 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

their perverse assertion that such crimes are 
only imaginary, and should not be punished, 
he threatens them, whatever be their position 
or dignity, with the severest punishments, in 
case they dare to counteract in any way the 
inquisitors, or interfere in behalf of the ac- 
cused. Finally, he proclaims that no appeal 
from the tribunals of the inquisitors to other 
courts, not even to the pope himself, will 
be allowed. The inquisitors and their assist- 
ants are invested with unlimited power over 
life and death, and are exhorted to fulfil 
their commission with zeal and severity. 

The bull contains no further indications as 
to how the judges should proceed in the trial 
of witches. The " Witch-hammer ' ; was al- 
lowed to establish its own norm of procedure. 
It is of importance here to give a resume of 
the contents of this book, since it became a 
juridical authority which was followed in all 
countries, even in the Protestant, until after 
the beginning of the eighteenth century. 
The spirit of the time can not be better char- 
acterized than by this book; in no clearer or 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 181 

more tangible way can it be shown whither 
supernatural ideas in cosmic philosophy will 
lead, and how they finally will destroy rea- 
son, morality, human feeling, and change the 
world into a mad-house. 

The book to which the bull of Pope Inno- 
cent and a diploma from the emperor Max- 
imilian serve as a commendatory introduc- 
tion, begins with an apology intended to 
show that its author does not introduce any 
thing novel and untried, but that its theo- 
ries are entirely founded upon the Scriptures. 
To prove this he quotes passages from the 
Old and New Testaments, from the fathers, 
the decrees of the councils, the canonical let- 
ters, from the writings of Thomas Aquinas, 
Damianus and others. The devil, says the 
"Witch-hammer," has no power indeed to 
suspend natural laws, but the Bible shows 
incontestably that God has vouchsafed him 
a wide dominion over the natural powers 
of corporeal things. Witness only the his- 
tory of Job, and the temptation of Jesus 
in the desert. Further, the existence of the 



182 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

many demoniacs spoken of in the New Tes- 
tament proves that Satan can dwell in man 
and use the human body as his implement. 
"But," says the "Witch-hammer," constantly 
aiming to deduce all its conclusions ostensi- 
bly according to logic, "there must be no 
confusion between demoniacs and witches. 
The existence of the former does not prove 
the existence of the latter ; this must be 
demonstrated in a different way. And this 
is the proof: The devil as a spiritual being 
is not capable of a real corporeal contact. 
He must therefore make use of an instru- 
ment to which he imparts his power ; for 
every bodily effect is produced by contact. 
These instruments are the sorcerers and the 
witches. It being then incontestable on the 
one side that the power of the devil is 
great, and on the other that he can ac- 
complish nothing without the aid of sorcer- 
ers and witches, the necessary conclusion is 
that these must exist. This conclusion is 
for the rest most decisively confirmed by 
the Bible. Moses ordains that witches should 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 183 

be put to death, a command which would be 
entirely superfluous if witches had not ex- 
isted. He who asserts that there are no 
witches must therefore rightly be accounted 
a heretic." 

The "Witch-hammer" then broaches the 
question, why it is that women are especially 
addicted to sorcery, and answers it as fol- 
lows : The holy fathers have often said that 
there are three things which have no mod- 
eration in good or evil: the tongue, a priest, 
and a woman. Concerning woman this is 
evident. All ages have made complaints 
against her. The wise Solomon, who was 
himself tempted to idolatry by women, has 
often in his writings given the feminine sex 
a sacl, but true, testimonial ; and the holy 
Chrysostom says: " What is woman but an 
enemy of friendship, an unavoidable punish- 
ment, a necessary coil, a natural tempta- 
tion, a desirable affliction, a constantly flow- 
ing source of tears, a wicked work of nature 
covered with a shining varnish ? " Already 
had the first woman entered into a sort of 



184 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

compact with the devil; should not then her 
daughters do it also ? The very word femina 
(woman) means one wanting in faith ; for fe 
means "faith," and minus "less."* Since 
she was formed of a crooked rib, her entire 
spiritual nature has been distorted and in- 
clined more towards sin than virtue. If we 
here compare the words of Seneca, "Wo- 
man either loves or hates ; there is no third 
possibility," it is easy to see that when she 
does not love God she must resort to the 
opposite extreme and hate him. It is thus 
clear why women especially are addicted to 
the practice of sorcery. f 

It might now be asked: How is it possible 
that God permits sorcery ? The ' ' Witch-ham- 
mer ' 7 answers that God has allowed, without 

* Many etymologies as profound occur in the " Witch -ham- 
mer." The word diabolus (devil) is derived from duo, "two," 
and bolus, "morsel," which is thus explained, that the devil 
fishes at the same time after two morsels, the soul and the 
body. 

f This deduction, replete with indecencies which can not be 
handled, occupies thirty-three pages of the "Witch-hammer." 
It pretends to be very convincing. It has also sent women by 
hundreds of thousands to death. 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 185 

any detriment to his perfections, the fall of 
angels and of our first parents ; and as he 
formerly sanctioned persecutions against the 
Christians, that the glory of the martyr might 
be increased, so he also now permits sorcery 
that the faith of the just may be the more 
manifest. 

The crime of the witches exceeds all other. 
They unite in one person the heretic, the 
apostate, and the murderer. The "Witch- 
hammer " proves that they are worse than 
the devil himself, for he has fallen once for 
all, and Christ has not suffered for him. The 
devil sins therefore only against the Creator, 
but the witch both against the Creator and 
the Redeemer. 

It is with these and similar questions that 
the first part of the " Witch -hammer " is 
occupied. The second part, describing the 
various kinds and effects of witchcraft and 
the celebration of the Witches 7 Sabbath is 
prefaced with an account of the power of 
witches. They produce hail, thunder and 
storms whenever they wish; they fly through 



186 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

the air from one place to another; they can 
make themselves insensible on the rack; they 
often subdue the judge's mind by charms, and 
confuse him through compassion; they deprive 
men and animals of reproductive power; they 
can see the absent, and predict coining events; 
they can fill, at their pleasure, human hearts 
with relentless hatred and passionate love ; 
they destroy the foetus in the womb, cause 
miscarriages, change themselves and others 
into cats and were-wolfs; nay, they are able 
to enchant and kill men and beasts by their 
very looks. Their strongest passion is to 
eat the flesh of children; still they eat only 
unchristened children: if at any time a bap- 
tized child is taken by them, it happens by 
special divine concession. 

Their compact with the devil is of two 
kinds: either a solemn one entered into with 
all formalities, or a mere private contract. 
The former is concluded as follows : The 
witches assemble upon a clay set apart by the 
devil. He appears in the assembly, exhorts 
them to faithfulness, and promises them glory, 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 187 

happiness and long life, and orders the older 
witches to introduce the novices whom he 
puts to the test and causes to take the oath 
of allegiance; whereupon he teaches them to 
prepare from the limbs of new-born babes 
witch-potions and witch-salves, and presents 
them with a powder, instructing them how it 
is to be used to the injury of men and beasts.* 
When then the novice has renewed the cere- 
mony of allegiance on the next Witch Sabbath 
she is a genuine witch. The children needed 
for the witches' kettles and the sabbath ban- 

* To give the reader a clearer idea of the really diabolical 
"blindness and brutality which characterizes the terrible book we 
are giving an account of, we quote the following statement from 
the "Witch-hammer," p. 223: "We (the inquisitors Sprengerand 
his colleagues) find that of all women that we have condemned 
to the flames very few have voluntarily done harm by sorcery. 
They have generally been forced by the devil to do it. After 
having confessed every thing (on the rack) they generally at- 
tempt suicide before being taken to the stake. It is the devil 
who tempts them thus, for he is afraid that by repentance and 
confession they will receive the pardon of God. If this wily 
trick is not successful, and if they are prevented from destroy- 
ing themselves, he knows how to rob them of the chance of 
grace by other means, namely, by smiting them with fury, mad- 
ness or sudden death ! " — Behold a sample of how theological 
arguments founded on superior natural influences can be used ! 



188 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

quets are obtained as follows: The victims are 
killed by looks or by the above-mentioned 
powder, when they lie in their cradle or in 
bed with their mothers. Simple people will 
then believe that they have died from some 
natural cause, — from sickness or suffocation. 
Then when buried the witches steal them 
from the grave. It has happened that judges 
have opened, after similar confessions, the 
grave and found the child in it; but in such 
cases the judge must consider that the devil 
is a great taskmaster who may have cheated 
the eyes of the servants of justice, in order to 
protect his servants, and in such a case the 
confession of the witch (forced from her by 
torture) should prove more than the easily 
deluded vision of the judge. [What a tri- 
umph of supernaturalistic argumentation !] 

The witch accomplishes her aerial voyages, 
says the "Witch-hammer," by smearing a 
vessel, a broom and a rake, a broomstick and 
a piece of linen, with the witch-salve; then 
rising she moves forth through the air, visible 
or invisible, according to her choice. The 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 189 

"Witch-hammer" reminds those who doubt 
these air- voyages, of Matt. iv. 5, where it is 
related how the devil carried Jesus up through 
the air to the pinnacle of the temple. 

We now proceed to the third part of the 
"Witch-hammer,' 7 the criminal law of the 
witch-courts, which gives instructions how 
" sorcerers, witches and heretics are to be 
tried before spiritual as well as civil tribunals." 

In regard to preliminary forms of pro- 
cedure, the " Witch -hammer " lays down 
first, "That the trial may commence with- 
out any previous accusation, and on the 
strength of a simple report that witches are 
found somewhere ; for it is the duty of the 
judge in a case fraught with many dangers 
to the soul, not to wait for an informer or 
accuser, but, ex officio, to institute immediate 
inquiry." When an inquisitor comes to a 
city or a village, he must exhort every body 
by means of proclamations nailed to the 
doors of churches and town-halls, and by 
threats of excommunication and punishment, 
to give information of all persons in any way 



190 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

suspected of the least connection with the 
practice of witchcraft, or otherwise of bad 
repute. The informers may be rewarded if 
the inquisitor thinks it well, by the blessing 
of the Church, and with money. A box to 
receive the statements of such informers as 
wish to be unknown should be placed in the 
Church. 

Two or three witnesses are sufficient to 
prove guilt. In case so many do not present 
themselves, then the judge may take means 
to find and summon them, and force them 
to tell the truth under oath. He has also 
the right to examine witnesses previous to 
the actual trial. As for the qualifications 
necessary to appear as witnesses, the "Witch- 
hammer 77 declares that the excommunicate, 
accomplices, outlawed, runaway and disso- 
lute women are irreproachable witnesses in 
cases where the faith is involved. A witch 
is allowed to testify against a witch, wife 
against husband, husband against wife, chil- 
dren against parents and so on, but if the 
testimonies of accomplices or relatives are 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 191 

to the advantage of the accused, then they 
are of no validity; for blood is of course thicker 
them water , and one raven does not willingly 
pick out the eyes of another. 

The "Witch-hammer" allows an accused 
to have an advocate, but adds: "If the coun- 
sellor defends his suspected client too warmly, 
it is right and reasonable that he should be 
considered as far more criminal than the sor- 
cerer or the witch herself; that is to say, as the 
protector of witches and heretics, he is more 
dangerous than the sorcerer. He should be 
looked upon with suspicion in the same de- 
gree as he makes a zealous defence." But a 
trial may be difficult enough without being 
clogged and hampered by a cunning advo- 
cate. In order to confuse such a one and 
ensnare the accused, it is necessary, says the 
"Witch-hammer," that a judge should re- 
member the words of the apostle, u Being 
crafty I caught you with guile" and show him- 
self crafty. The "Witch-hammer" informs 
the judge of five " honest and apostolical 
tricks " (these are the very words of the 



192 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

book); one of them consists in embodying in 
the copy of the proceedings which is given 
to the defending lawyer, a number of facts 
that have not occurred in the trial, and in 
mixing the names of the witnesses. " By 
that means the accused and their lawyer 
may be so confused that they nowise know 
who has said any thing, or what has been 
said." 

Among the questions to be put to a per- 
son under accusation, the "Witch-hammer" 
recommends a number, the quality of which 
may be appreciated by reading the following 
examples: "Do you know that people hold 
you to be a witch ? "Why have you been 
observed upon the precincts of N. N".? Why 
have you touched JST. JST.'s child (or cow)? 
How did it happen that the child (or the 
cow) soon after fell sick ? What was your 
business outside of your house when the 
storm broke forth? How can you explain 
that your cow yields three times as much 
milk as the cows of others ? " 

Sprenger's work gives a detailed account of 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 193 

the treatment to which a person who is ac- 
cused of sorcery and handed over to the 
judge must be subjected. Before the trial 
the accused must be put on the rack in order 
that his mind may be inclined to confession. 
Some, rather than confess their guilt, allow 
themselves to be torn asunder limb by limb; 
they are ".the worst witches," and their en- 
durance is explained by the supposition "that 
the devil hardens them against their tortures.' 7 
Others who have been less faithful to him he 
abandons, and are thus easily induced to con- 
fess. "If no confession has been wrung from 
the witch during the first clay" — we quote 
the "Witch-hammer" literally — "the torture 
is to be continued the second and the third 
day. The civil law forbids, to be sure, to re- 
peat the torture, when no proof has been ad- 
duced, but it may be continued" 

The judge should therefore use the follow- 
ing formula: "We ordain that the torture 
shall be continued (not repeated) to-morrow." 

The second clay the instruments of torture 
are to be exhibited to the accused, and an at- 

13 



194 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

tending priest shall read the following adju- 
ration: " I adjure thee, N". N., in the name of 
the Holy Trinity, by the bitter tears of Jesus 
Christ which he shed upon the cross 
by the tears of God's saints and elect which 
they have shed over the world . . that, 
if thou art innocent, thou pour forth im- 
mediately abundant tears; but, if thou art 
guilty, no tears at all. In the name of God 
our Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. 
Amen.' 7 

The person thus adjured seldom weeps. 
But if this should occur, the judge should 
see that it be not saliva or some other fluid 
that moistens the eye of the witch. The 
witch must be led into the court-room back- 
wards, that the judge may see her before she 
sees him. Otherwise she may enchant him 
and move him to criminal compassion. « 

Before the examination of witnesses, the ac- 
cused must be stripped of all her clothing and 
have all the hair on her body shaved off, and 
her limbs must be carefully examined to as- 
certain if they bear marks, for the devil 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 195 

marks his own. It must be further ascer- 
tained by pricking with a needle if any part 
of the body is devoid of feeling, for that is a 
sure sign of a witch. Still the absence of 
such a sign nowise proves innocence. 

If the witch can not be made to confess by 
any means, then the judge must send her to 
a distant prison. The janitor, some friend 
and chaste women are to be persuaded to 
visit the prisoner, and promise to help her to 
escape, if she will only inform them of some 
of her arts. In this way, remarks the author 
of the "Witch -hammer, " many a one has 
been ensnared by us. 

We conclude here our account of Spren- 
ger's dreadful book. The reader has contem- 
plated sufficiently this fruit on the tree of the 
devil. — It may fill us with loathing to con- 
sider it, but its teachings are instructive. 
May we know the tree from the fruit, and 
may we tear it up with its roots — with those 
roots yet so abundantly watered by men who 
know not what they are doing. The fires 
which the bull of Pope Innocent kindled all 



196 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

over Europe, threw their weird light far into 
the times which have been called the modern, 
— far in the eighteenth century. To count 
these victims of the stake would be impossi- 
ble. It is, however, sometimes attempted in 
our days; archives are searched through and 
discoveries are made which surpass every an- 
ticipation. The victims amount to millions. 
No age was spared. Children were brought 
to the stake with their mothers. A silent, 
gloomy presentiment seized every community 
when the proclamation on the church doors 
announced that the inquisitor had arrived. 
All work in the shops and fields ceased, and 
all the evil passions flared up into greater 
activity. He who had an open enemy, or 
suspected secret envy, knew beforehand that 
he was lost. It was considered better to 
anticipate than to be anticipated in denounc- 
ing; and the tribunal had hardly commenced" 
its activity, ere it was overcrowded with in- 
formers. "When they had commenced in 
one place to burn witches, 77 says an author 
of the seventeenth century, "more were found 



THE MAGIC OF THE TEOFLE. 197 

in proportion as they were burned." In va- 
rious communities in Germany and France all 
the women were sent to the stake. In many 
instances it went so far that princes and po- 
tentates were forced, from fear of seeing their 
subjects exterminated, to stay by authorita- 
tive command the madness of the inquisitors. 
Greed brought fuel to the flames which super- 
stition and hatred kindled. We will quote 
but one example from the history of the 
Scotch witch-processes. A man named Hop- 
kins who was sent to the gallows, convicted of 
murder, confessed there that he had brought 
two hundred women to the stake, and for a 
recompense of twenty shillings each, — a sum 
with which the judge rewarded him. 

And there was heard in all Europe for 
many centuries not a single voice raised in 
the effort to stay the murder with weapons 
of reason or religion ! If there was any who 
did not share the madness of his time, fear 
paralyzed his tongue, and learning and relig- 
ion, far from impeding the evil, had yoked 
themselves to its triumphal car. With the 



198 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

Bible in their hands, the theologians sanc- 
tioned these barbarous proceedings, and the 
learned defended them with reasons drawn 
from the fathers and with subtle argumenta- 
tion. The Protestant theologians vied with 
the Catholic in learning. Even Luther and 
the first reformers did not check, but pro- 
moted, the belief in devils. If paganism had 
been described by the fathers as Satan's work 
and empire, Luther referred the preceding 
life of the Church from the beginning of 
papacy to the same sphere, and changed 
the whole history of humankind to a diabol- 
ical drama. The struggle between the Refor- 
mation and Catholicism contributed in still 
another way to intensify the faith in devils. 
The religious contest stirred the mind of the 
age in its innermost depths. Many who oc- 
cupied middle ground between the reforming 
preacher on the one hand and the Catholic 
priest on the other, were hesitating between 
the old and the new, and many consciences 
which had already embraced the new were 
agitated by uneasiness and doubt. The Cath- 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 199 

olic divine saw in these doubts the beginning 
of the victory over Satanic error; the Protest- 
ant theologian declared the same doubts to 
be inspired by the originator of papacy, the 
devil. We can appreciate this state of things 
by reading Luther's " Tischreden." Men ter- 
rified, for instance, by a dream or a strange 
noise in the night (nothing more than this 
was required for such an effect) hurried to 
their pastor to lay their troubles before him. 
They were then informed, on the one hand, 
that the dream or the voice was caused by 
the devil, to whom their apostacy had bound 
them over, or, on the other, that Satan was 
trying to frighten them back into the errors 
which they had abandoned. In both cases 
the archfiend was the agent. ' ' He was in 
the castle of the knight, the palaces of the 
mighty, the libraries of the learned, on every 
page of the Bible, in the churches, in the 
halls of justice, in the lawyer's chambers, in 
the laboratories of physicians and naturalists, 
in cottages, farmyards, stalls, — everywhere."* 

* Horst: "Demonomagie," I. 



200 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

He was indeed everywhere, and Christen- 
dom had become a hell. "The belief in the 
devil," says a British author,* speaking upon 
this subject, "had had the effect, that all ra- 
tional knowledge had disappeared, that all 
sound philosophy was denounced, that the 
morality of the people was poisoned and hu- 
manity sunk in a whirlpool of folly, godless- 
ness and brutality. All classes were carried 
away by this whirlpool. The God of nature 
and Revelation had no longer the reins of 
the world in his hand. The powers of hell 
and darkness, born of a diseased imagination, 
reigned upon the earth." 



Throwing its gloomy shadow even into the 
eighteenth century, it was, however, during 
the Middle Ages that the belief in sorcery 
sent down its deep and mighty roots. This 
is not to be wondered at. The men of the 
Middle Ages lived less in the real than in a 
world of magic, in a world resembling more 

* Colquhoun. 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 201 

the paintings of " Helve tes-Breugliels " than 
the descriptions of Armidas isle. The air was 
saturated with demoniacal vapors. The pop- 
ular literature consisted of legends of saints 
and stories about the devil. The Church, the 
general asylum against the devil, saw and 
taught the people to see everywhere the play 
of evil powers which must be conquered by 
magical practices, and amidst Ahriman and 
his hosts who had now established themselves 
in the Occident, and as heirs to the horns and 
tails of Pans and fauns, a crowd of native 
spirits moved; imps, giants, trolls, forest-spir- 
its, elves and hobgoblins in and on the earth; 
nicks, river-sprites in the water, fiends in the 
air, and salamanders in the fire. And to 
these elementary spirits were added a whole 
fauna of monsters, such as dragons, griffins, 
were-wolves, witch-kine, Thor's-swine, and so 
on. But this does not conclude the review: 
spectres, ghosts, vampires, spirits causing the 
nightmare, and so on, — supernatural beings 
derived from the human world, but of dim- 
mer outlines than the preceding, — conclude 



202 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

the motley procession. The mandrake has a 
place in it also. This being deserves a few 
lines here, inasmuch as it has now faded from 
the popular superstitions. 

The mandragora or alrun* is originally a 
very rare herb which can hardly be found 
except below the gallows where a pure youth 
has been hanged. f He who seeks the herb 
should know that its lower part has the 
shape of a human being, and that its upper 
part consists of broad leaves and yellow flow- 
ers. When it is torn from the soil it sighs, 
shrieks and moans so piteously, that he who 

* MyXa Mavdpayopov (in Hebrew dudaim) is in the Sep- 
tuagint a name for the love-apples with which Leah regaled her 
husband (Gen. xxx. 14). Pliny speaks of the mandragora as a 
poisonous herb, dangerous to dig; now already Columella 
knows the mandragora as a half-human being — "semihomo 
mandragoras." 

f Man sagt: wenn ein Erbdieb, dem, wie den Ziguenern 
das Stehlen angeboren ist, oder dessen Mutter, als sie mit ihm 
schwanger ging, gestohlen, oder doch gross Geliisten dazu 
gehabt— nach Einigen; auch ein Unschuldiger, welcher in der 
Tortur sich fur einen Dieb bekennt — und der ein reiner Jung- 
geselle ist, gehankt wird, und das Wasser lasst, oder sein Same 
auf die Erde fallt, so wachst ansolchem Ort der Alraun. — "Nork: 
Sitten und Gebrauche der Dcutschen und ihrer Nachbarvblker." 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 203 

hears it must die. To find it one should go 
out before sunrise on a Friday morning, 
after having filled his ears carefully with 
cotton, wax or pitch, and bring with him a 
black dog without one white hair. The sign 
of the cross must be made three times over 
the mandrake, and the soil dug up carefully 
all around it, so that it be attached only by 
the fine rootlets. It is then tied by a string 
to the tail of -the dog and he is attracted for- 
ward by a piece of bread. The dog pulls 
the plant out of the earth, but falls dead, 
struck by the terrible shriek of the mandra- 
gora. It is then brought home, washed in 
red wine, wrapped in red and white silk, 
laid in a shrine, washed again every Friday, 
and dressed in a white frock. The mandra- 
gora reveals hidden things and future events, 
and procures for the owner the friendship 
of all men. A silver coin deposited with it 
in the evening is doubled in the morning. 
Still the coin must not be too large in size. 
If you buy the mandragora it remains with 
you, throw it wherever you will, until you 



204 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

sell it again. If you keep it till your death 
you must depart with it to hell. But it can be 
sold only for a lower price than it was bought. 
Therefore is he who has bought it with the 
smallest existing coin, irretrievably lost. 

The being called mandragora was, as we 
see, a kind of " Bpiritus familiarise But it 
appeared in still another form. It happened 
that adventurers represented themselves as 
mandragoras, and on account of this mystical 
origin had gained success at court, having first 
been spiritually made human by Christian 
baptism. But they lost by baptism their won- 
der-working power, greatly to their own and 
others' pecuniary disadvantage. Still greater 
was the number of those adventurers during 
the Middle Ages who asserted themselves or 
others to be the bastards of devils and hu- 
man beings. But if they led a blameless life, 
evincing a firm belief in the dogmas of the 
Church, the danger of such a pedigree was 
not greater than the honor. The son of a 
fallen angel did not need to bend his head 
before a man of noble birth. 






THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 205 

In the demoniacal fauna of the Middle 
Ages the were-wolf plays too important a 
role to be passed over in silence. He was 
the terror of rural districts. Were- wolves 
are men who change themselves for a time 
into wolves, and then rove about hunting for 
children. The belief in the were-wolf is very 
ancient. Antique authors speak of it as a 
superstition among the Scythians, and among 
shepherds and peasants in the eastern prov- 
inces.* Then the change was considered to 
result from certain herbs growing in Pontus; 
in the Middle Ages it was the devil who 
wrapped a wolf's hide around the witch 
or the enchanted person. Even this belief 
was embraced and proclaimed by Augustine. 
Augustine, — the same father who declared 
that he would not believe the gospel if the 
authority of the Church did not exhort him 

* So Propertius and Plinius. Virgil (eclog. YET.) makes a 
shepherd sing: 

Has herbas, atque hsec Ponto mihi lecta venena, 
Ipse dedit Mceris: nascuntur plurima Ponto. 
His ego scepe lupum fieri, et se conclere selvis 
Moerim vidi. 



206 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

to do so, — found it worthy of a Sadducean or 
a pagan philosopher alone to deny the exist- 
ence of so well-known a phenomenon as the 
were-wolf. The emperor Sigismund had the 
question investigated "scientifically' 7 in his 
presence by theologians, and they came to 
the general agreement that the were-wolf is 
"a positive and constant fact' 7 ; for the ex- 
istence of the devil being accepted, there is 
no reason to deny that of the were-wolf, sup- 
ported as it is by the authority of the fathers 
of the Church and by general experience.* 
This "general experience 77 finally became, 
like the belief in sorcery, a raging mental 
disease, an epidemic ("insama zoanthroj)ica " ') 
infecting whole districts in various parts of 
Europe and sending many insane persons 
who had confessed before the courts their 
imagined sin, to the place of execution, f 

* Melancthon, who firmly believed in the were-wolf, reasoned 
in the same way. 

f As late as 1804 a vagabond named Mare'chal was accused by 
the peasants in Longueville as a sorcerer and were-wolf. At 
his trial the mysterious were-wolf excursions were resolved into 
thieving rambles, and Mare'chal was condemned for burglary to 
the galleys. 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 207 

Nearly related to this lycanthropy is the 
more horrible vampirism. The vampires, ac- 
cording to the belief of the Middle Ages, are 
disembodied souls which clothe themselves 
again in their buried bodies, steal at night 
into houses, and suck from the nipple of the 
sleeping all their blood. He who is thus be- 
reft of the vital fluid is in his turn changed 
into a vampire and visits preferably his own 
relatives. If the corpse of a person suspect- 
eel of vampirism is dug up, and its stomach 
pressed, an abundance of fresh blood flows 
from the mouth. The corpse is well pre- 
served. The belief in vampires has likewise 
produced a kind of psychical pestilence which 
yet in the eighteenth century spread terror in 
the Austrian provinces.* 

If sorcery was an imaginary people's magic, 

* Dining the restauration in 1815, when all the dead rose 
in their sepulchres, the famous von Gorres sought to revive the 
belief in vampirism. He has written about it a work of mighty- 
learning, wherein he discourses profusely of the "vegetative" 
sources of the body, which he asserts continue their activity 
after death, and thus enable the soul of the deceased to re- 
occupy and for a while reoperate its old machinery. 



208 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

there existed also a real, and it consisted in 
an infinite variety of usages, observances and 
rules for all conditions of life. Not to speak 
of the astrologers' extensive hand- written cal- 
endars, which pointed out which constellations, 
seasons and days are auspicious for bathing, 
bleeding, hair-cutting, shaving, house-build- 
ing, wooing, engaging servants, setting out on 
travels and so on, there existed among the 
people an incredibly large mass of rules for 
living which any body that would avoid the 
constant danger of bringing misfortune on 
himself and his family, must know. 

From waking up in the morning to going 
asleep at night, such maxims were to be ob- 
served: putting the wrong foot first out of 
bed in the morning was as sure to be fol- 
lowed by annoyances in the course of the day 
as a neglect to place the shoes with the heels 
toward the bed at night was certain to cause 
the visit of ghosts or evil dreams. When 
children are born, no one must go out or in, 
or open the door without bringing fire with 
him, that the trolls may not find their way in 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOTLE. 209 

and exchange the child; and no one entering 
must say a word before he has touched the 
fire. For the same reason the child, while 
unchristened, must be watched carefully every 
night, and a fire must be kept constantly burn- 
ing on the hearth. Before the christening a 
child must not be moved from one room to 
another without putting steel beside it. If 
two boys are baptized on the same occasion, 
that one who obtains his name and blessing 
first will be best endowed both bodily and 
mentally. On the day of christening the 
mother should avoid handling an axe, knife 
or other cutting instruments, otherwise the 
child will some time be murdered. If the 
floor under a cradle is swept, the child will 
be bereft of its sleep. If the cradle is moved 
while the child is not in it, the child becomes 
peevish. When a child yawns, the sign of 
the cross must be made over its mouth, and 
the words "Jesus, Grod's son!" added; other- 
wise the devil will then enter into it. If a 
child looks out through the window or looks 

in a mirror at night, it will fall sick. Chil- 
li 



210 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

dren punished on Sunday become disobedi- 
ent; but a child whipped on Good Friday 
before sunset, will become obedient and well- 
behaved. If the child walks about in one 
shoe, the mother will have a sore back. If a 
child walks or runs backwards, it drives its 
parents so many steps into hell. A child 
eating and reading at the same time gets a 
bad memory. If a suitor's first gift to his 
betrothed consists of shoes, she will be un- 
faithful, if of stockings, she will be jealous. 
Nuptials on Mondays, Wednesdays and Sat- 
urdays are unfortunate. If a bridal proces- 
sion comes to a stop for any reason, the mar- 
ried pair will meet with dissensions. If the 
marriage-ring is too small, misfortune is in 
store. Of the bridal pair, that one dies first 
who first kneels down or rises from kneeling. 
Those who hold the canopy must not change 
hands or touch the bride's crown, for that 
prognosticates misfortune and ennui. If in 
going out an old woman or one carrying 
water is met, the room should be re-entered. 
When the table is set, the bread must be laid 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 211 

upon it immediately. Bread must never be 
placed with the upper crust clown. Great 
care must be taken to remove all substances 
separated from the bocly, as hair, nails, blood; 
they must be buried in the soil so as not to 
come in contact with diseased persons, or fall 
into the hands of witches. 

We have selected the preceding observ- 
ances and rules as examples of those thou- 
sands of precepts for all conditions of life 
which have been collected by investigations 
in this field from the mouths of the people. 
A full collection would require a large vol- 
ume. In all of them is seen a servile fear 
of mysterious evil influences, lurking on all 
sides, and whose power or impotency as re- 
gards man nowise depends on his morality, 
but only on the way in which he observes 
certain ethically indifferent acts. Many of 
them seem to have arisen only by faulty 
application of the theory of causality; others 
depend on a symbolical method of contem- 
plating nature. What a difference between 
this popular wisdom and that stored up in 



212 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

the gnomes of the Greeks or in the heathen 
Havamal ! Part of the former may be like- 
wise an heirloom, but how exuberantly these 
superstitions grew during the centuries of 
ripe and glaring belief in personified evil; 
how deeply they struck root among the peo- 
ple, while Havamal has been saved from 
the flood of time only by the hand of the 
student ! 

Among the superstitions are to be counted 
the magical prognosis of diseases and death. 
Many were the tokens of the approaching 
skeleton - figure with his scythe and glass. 
They were heard in the cawing of crows 
and ravens, in the howling of dogs, in the 
chirping of the cricket, and the regular tick- 
ing of the wood-worm concealed in the wall. 
If the horse of a priest riding to visit a sick 
person in his parish lowered its head upon 
arriving at a house, if a gnat was caught 
gnawing any clothing, if a light suddenly 
went out, if an image fell down, if a glass 
or a mirror was broken, it indicated an ap- 
proaching death in the house. To determine 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 213 

the fate of a sick person, a piece of bread of 
which he had eaten was laid in a dark cor- 
ner, and its change of color was observed; 
or a piece of fat with which the soles of the 
sick had been smeared was offered to a dog, 
or a stone was lifted to see if any thing was 
concealed beneath it. If the bread became 
dark, or if the dog refused to eat what was 
offered him, or if there was no living thing 
under the stone, then the sick person was 
considered incurable, and nothing could be 
hoped even from the inherited medical skill 
of the wise old men and women. The exer- 
cise of this skill consisted in the use, along 
with "reading" and conjurations, partly of 
herbs of more or less known efficiency, and 
partly also, as it appears, of magnetic forces, 
resorted to mechanically without reflection. 
The medical art inherited among the peo- 
ple from generation to generation is a subject 
which none but a clear-sighted and unpre- 
judiced scientist of the medical profession 
can treat, and which has been left hitherto 
without that investigation which the subject 



214 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

undoubtedly deserves, at least from a histori- 
cal point of view. There was, at the end of 
the Middle Ages, among the devotees of the 
Galenic art a man of genius who, despair- 
ing to find in the folios of the medical scho- 
lastics any traces of truth, abandoned the 
lecture-room and went forth into the world 
without in order, as he himself said, to read 
the book of nature and learn something of 
that medical instinct with which Glod, as he 
believed, must have endowed men as well 
as animals, and which must find a true ex- 
pression only in the people living in im- 
mediate reciprocity with nature. This man 
was Paracelsns. He who despised and over- 
whelmed with mockery the coryphei of his 
days in the medical faculties, did not disdain 
to listen to "the experience of peasants, old 
women, night- wanderers, and vagabonds," and 
the magnetical system which he constructed 
u by the illumination of nature's light, and 
not by the lamp-flare of an apothecary's 
shop," rest in all probability on the gene- 
ral principles which he found in the plural- 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 215 

ity of sympathetic cures practiced among 
the people. In the "reading" by which 
these cures were accompanied, Paracelsus 
saw rightly nothing but a subjective mo- 
ment, and means of making faith and im- 
agination the allies of the physician. A 
mass of these conjuration-formulae in differ- 
ent diseases have been collected and pub- 
lished in various countries of Europe. They 
offer the reader little or nothing of interest.* 
A very common usage during the Middle 
Ages was to measure the sick person, at one 

* Some of tlie popular forms of conjuration are in Latin, 
though corrupted so as to be almost beyond recognition. A 
couple of restored examples may be given. This is the formula 
against bloody-flux: 

Sanguis mane in venis 
Sicut Christus in pcenis, 
Sanguis mane tixus 
Sicut Christus fuit crucifixus. 
Against fever: 

Deus vos solvet sambuco, panem et sal ego vobis adduco, 
febrem tertianam et quotidianani accipite vos, qui nolo earn. 
Against epilepsy: 

Melchior, Balthaser, portans hsec nomina Caspar, 
Solvitur e morbo Domini pietate caduco. 
Perpetret et ternas defunctis psallere missas. 
Barachun. Barachagim. Destrue. Subalgat. 



216 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

time to cure him, at another to find out if 
the disease was decreasing or increasing. 
Another means was to drag him through a 
hole. Sick children were pulled through 
holes dug in the earth or through a cleft 
cherry-tree. Sick sheep were forced to creep 
through the cleft of an oak, and so on. An- 
other remedy against many kinds of suffer- 
ings was the binding of a thread or a band 
which had been read over, around the neck or 
some limb of the sick. Connected with this 
is the tying of witch-knots, used only with 
evil intent. Bands of different colors and 
material* were required for these. They 
were buried near the dwelling of the person 
to be injured. It was thought that by this 
means any limb or bodily power of an enemy 
could be impaired. A French jurist and 
witch-judge, Pierre Delancre, complains that 
in his daj^s there were few married couples 

* Compare Virgil, Eel. VIII : 

Terna tibi lisec primum triplici diversa colore 

Licia circumdo. . . 

Necte tribus nodis ternos, Amarylli, colores : 

Necte, Amarylli, modo : et Veneris, die, vincula necto. 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. VlI 

in France whose happiness had not been 
marred by this means ; young men hardly 
dared to marry from fear of it. Hincmar, 
archbishop of Eheims, advised, as a remedy 
against this influence, a diligent use of the sac- 
raments. In French rituals church -prayers 
against the effects of witch-knots are pre- 
scribed. Hardly less universally was it the 
custom to make dolls of rags, dough, wax or 
clay, baptize them with the name of the 
hated person, put them in the fire or pierce 
them with needles, and bury them under the 
threshold of that individual, all in order to 
inflict sufferings on him.* Diseases could 
also be transferred to dolls by reading cer- 
tain formulas, and placing them in some in- 
accessible place, or in running water. 

Not only against diseases, but also against 
the dangers of fire and war, against ill-luck 
in love or chase, on voyages and the like, 
magical remedies were freely resorted to by 

* Compare same eclogue: 

Limus ut hie durescit, et hsec tit cera liquescit 
Uno eodemque igni: sic nostro Daphnis amore. 



218 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

the people. The " Witch - hammer " com- 
plains bitterly against the criminal prac- 
tice of the soldiers in mutilating crucifixes 
in order to harden themselves against the 
sword and bullets. The executioner in Pas- 
sau gained, daring the Thirty Years' War, 
a wide reputation for his skill in hardening 
the human frame, which he did by means 
of scraps of paper with cabalistic figures 
(Passauer Henkers-Zettel), which were eaten. 
The belief that hunters procured, by means 
of conjurations, "free-arrows" and "free- 
bullets" was very common. The "Witch- 
hammer " accuses various potentates of hav- 
ing in their pay "diabolical archers" who 
hit their mark from a long distance with- 
out aiming. It was customary at fires to 
throw into the flames so-called shields of 
David, — plates with two intersecting trian- 
gles and the motto "Agla " (the initials of 
four Hebrew words meaning: "Thou art 
strong eternally, Lord!") and " consum- 
matum est." As late as in the middle of the 
last century the magistrate of Leipzig or- 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 219 

dered that such plates should be laid up in 
the rathhaus to be used in case of fires. 
In Catholic countries the clergy took the 
employment of magical appliances against 
fires into their own hands; processions sing- 
ing and bearing relics went around the burn- 
ing house three times, and if this had no 
salutary effect, it was a sure sign that God 
had allowed the devil to wield the consum- 
ing element unto destruction. 

The extent of this treatise does not al- 
low a detailed exposition of the many di- 
vinatory arts which had their adepts among 
the people. The Church preaching mightily 
against those arts and representing them as 
devices of the devil, the father of lies and 
founder of oracles, did not, however, deny, 
but could confirm by biblical quotation, their 
power to unveil futurity. 

Every thing that we have here described 
was to the Church black magic : all mystical 
practices among the people, whether resorted 
to for good or evil purposes, to heal or cure, 
were looked upon as implying contempt for 






220 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 



the divine magic of the Church itself, and 
also a league with the devil, if not a formal 
one, at any rate a "pactum implieitum." It 
was therefore the possessors of the traditional 
popular art of healing who were first sent 
to the stake wherever the inquisition com- 
menced its trials. But no terrorism could 
eradicate the popular magic so long as the 
persecutors themselves believed in its effi- 
ciency, and fought only for a consecrated 
superstition against its outlawed counterfeit. 
The struggle against the superstition of the 
Church as well as of the people, was re- 
served for another time and for another the- 
ory of the universe and of morals. 

The so-called wandering scholastics (scholas- 
tici vagantes, schohres erratici) formed a kind 
of connecting link between the magic of the 
learned and that of the common people. 
They were ruined and adventurous students, 
priests and monks who wandered about in 
the rural districts of most of the European 
states, especially Germany, representing them- 
selves as treasure-diggers, selling u spiritusfa- 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 221 

miliares" amulets, love-potions, and life-elix- 
irs, conjuring spirits, divining by the stars, and 
healing men and cattle. These adventurers 
were associated in a regular guild, and had 
like other vagrant tradesmen, their lodg- 
ings and hospitals in the cities. They were 
dreaded competitors of the witch-fathers of 
the cloisters, were several times excommuni- 
cated by the Church, and seem to have nearly 
disappeared when the witch-trials commenced 
in earnest. It is to a person of that kind 
that the Faust-legend is attached. It reflects 
the popular opinions concerning the power 
of learned magicians.* 

The same period which saw the bull of 
Innocentius promulgated, and the belief in 
devils culminate in the witch-processes, gave 
birth to the renaissance. This saviour came 



* The Faust-legend, formed during the time of the Eeforma- 
tion, sought at first to employ one of the heroes of the learned 
magic, Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, as its chief character; but a 
biography of him, published by his pupil, Wierus, having dis- 
pelled the fantastical halo enveloping his personality, the crea- 
tive desire sought a more obscure object which it could trans- 
form according to its bizarre imaginations. 



222 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

to the world in the hour of its intensest need. 
The Hellenic spirit, born again from the 
study of classic literature and classic art, was 
a new Messias putting his heel on the head 
of the old serpent and saving humanity from 
the power of death and of the devil. The 
people sitting in darkness illumined only by 
the lurid flames kindled by the inquisition 
saw a great light and stretched their hands 
towards the new dawn. The study of the 
ancients had an immense influence, all the 
more as the actual world was so different 
from the antique world. The exhumed mon- 
uments of Hellas revealed other state systems 
than the feudal of the Middle Ages, — states 
which were organizations, not mere mechan- 
ical conglomerates of conquerors and con- 
quered, and were founded upon a nobler ba- 
sis than given or assumed privileges. These 
monuments revealed an independent search 
for truth which had placed itself above tra- 
dition — a novel spectacle to the people of 
the Middle Ages ! They revealed an art in 
which harmony reigned between spirit and 



THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE. 223 

nature, between the higher life and sensu- 
ousness, between the relative opposites which 
the Middle Ages had conceived as absolute, 
placing them against one another in a strug- 
gle which wrecked beauty and moralit}-. 
They revealed large symmetrical characters 
as free from the asceticism of the Middle 
Ages as from the wild sensuality of that 
time. All these ideas, hailed with enthusi- 
asm, could not but transform the appearance 
of the world. They overthrew the darkness 
of the Middle Ages, put the devil and hell 
to flight, and drove them into that lumber- 
corner of the spiritual kingdom where they 
are at present, but from which, at any po- 
litical reaction, they peer out eagerly watch- 
ing whether they may not once more bring 
the great wide world into their power. But 
they shall scarcely succeed in this, as long 
as freedom of thought and scientific inde- 
pendence are guarded as the foremost con- 
ditions of the spiritual health of mankind; 
and they shall utterly fail when an all-ex- 
tended intelligence has taught the people 



224 THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

that the premises of the devil-dogma, if they 
could be again inoculated into the popular 
mind, would show anew the same results 
which have been depicted above, and lead 
us back to the terrible times of the inquisi- 
tion and the burning of witches. This, no 
doubt, even the orthodox defenders of be- 
lief in an impersonated evil principle do not 
desire ; but they do not observe that history 
acts more consistently than they, and cures 
general errors only by making long genera- 
tions diaw from them the last consequences 
and suffer their full effect. 



THE END. 



INDEX. 



Adam's sin, brings countless 
woes on man, 12. 

Agnus Dei, 63; its power, 64. 

Ahriman, affirmed to have been 
Judaized in "Satan," 35; re- 
Tilled at Marathon, 36; bis 
power over man limited, 47; 
author of black magic, 51. 

Alexander, conquers Asia, but 
helps the triumph of dual- 
ism, 37. 

Ammonius Sacca, tries to re- 
store Neoplatonism, 40. 

Amulets employed in Church- 
magic, 62, 63. 

Angels, belong to the lowest 
hierarchy, 5; have the care of 
mortals, 6. 

Appolonius of Tyana, deemed 
the peer of Christ in gift of 
miracles, 40, 163. 

Archangels, part of the lowest 
hierarchy, 5 ; protect religion, 
6. 

Archetypes, world of, i. e., the 
Empyrean, 1 ; all celestial 
things are in the Empyrean; 
are immaterial, 6. 

Aristotle's method revives sci- 
ence, 44. 



Astrology, introduction to (Ta- 
ble II. of correspondences), 
127. 

Atmosphere of earth situate next 
below space of the moon, 2. 

Augustine, a Manicheian, 43; 
last of the fathers educated in 
philosophy, 41 ; quoted on 
baptism, 57; quoted on the 
existence of fauns, satyrs, etc., 
162; believes in the existence 
of were-wolves, 206. 

Baptism, copied, in anticipa- 
tion, in the Mithras myste- 
ries, 57. 

Baptismal water, its various ef- 
ficacy, 58. 

Bartholomeus Chassaneus, in- 
structs how to proceed in the 
courts against common pests, 
78. 

Benoit de Montferrand, bishop 
of Lausanne, excommunicates 
may-bugs, 75, 76. 

Bereshit, its mystic meaning, 
114. 

Bethesda, the efficacy of the 
water in its pool inferior to 
that of baptism, 57. 



226 



INDEX. 



Bishop Gerhard, converts the 
heretics of Arras, 60. 

Boethius, on the basis of crea- 
tion, 124. 

Borrichius (Olaf Borch) cited, 
115. 

Bunsen's Gott in der Geschich- 
te, quoted, 93, 94, 175. 

Cabalists' method of searching 
out the inner meaning of the 
Bible, 144; discover the sev- 
enty-two mystical names of 
God, 146. 

Christian fathers, one of, doubts 
if his way of attaining perfec- 
tion is the only one, 32; one 
of, declares every thing in 
heathen thought to be of the 
devil, 42. 

Church the, prepared for by 
election of the Jews, and 
founded by Christ, 14; is one 
body; accumulates a wealth 
of supererogatory works, and 
grants remission of guilt also 
to dead, 15; a mole against 
the tide of sin, 16; the king- 
dom of God on earth; her 
destiny universal extension, 
18 ; can not check the growth 
of sin; her emblem an ark, 
22; the only legitimate bodily 
physician, 68; forbids at sev- 
eral councils the secular prac- 
tice of medicine, 72. 

Church bells, their power against 
the demons, 74. 

Clemens of Alexandria, fights 



for the union of belief and 
thought, 41; quoted on the 
mission of philosophy, 42; 
rejects the doctrine of eternal 
punishment, 43. 

Colquhoun quoted, 200. 

Conception-billets described, 
64-66. 

"Conjurer of Hell," 148. 

Contrast between state of Soci- 
ety in Middle Ages and Hel- 
lenic and later European civ- 
ilizations due to different the- 
ories of the universe, 29. 

Cosmic Philosophy of Middle 
Ages, 1-28. 

Cyprianus and others enter into 
league with Satan, 165. 

Delrio, ascribes the origin of 
witchcraft to Zoroaster, 45. 

Demonianism, cured by the 
Church, 70. 

Demons, fallen intelligences of 
the middle hierarchy, 11; war 
against the good angels ; cause 
storms and drouth; pervade 
the elements, 12; entice man, 
13; able to take full posses- 
sion of men, 25. 

Deutsche Theologie, quoted on 
the nature of evil, 26. 

Differences between the dualism 
of Zoroaster and the Chris- 
tian, 46-48. 

Dissection prohibited, 71. — 

Dominion, order of angels, re- 
ceives the commands of God, 
5. 



INDEX. 



221 






Dualism, of the Middle Ages 
affirmed to have been derived 
from Persia, 34; its conflict 
with the unitarian notions of 
Greece the sum of history 
between Cyrus and Constan- 
tine ; wins a flank-position on 
the Mediterranean upon the 
return of the Jews from cap- 
tivity; its demon-belief testi- 
fied to by the many demoni- 
acs in the time of Christ, 
35; magic and belief upon 
authority its necessary con- 
sequences, 36; derived from 
Zoroaster, 38; spreads over 
the Eoman provinces, 39; ad- 
vances against Europe, as 
Manicheism, 43; is finally ab- 
solute and brings on the Dark 
Ages, 44; is intensified after 
entering Christianity, 46, and 
undergoes changes, 47, 48; at- 
tacks the inner authority, 92. 

Earth, encompassed by ten 
heavens, 1; made a paradise 
for man; explains symboli- 
cally man's destiny, 8. 

Egidius, opposes fire-worship, 
171. 

Electrum magicum, 138. 

Elements, four prime in the 
constitution of all things, 3. 

Eleusinian mysteries, fragments 
of, preserved in magic of the 
learned, 117. 

Empire, third order of angels, 
ward off all hindrances, 5. 



Empyrean, the heaven of fire; 
world of archetypes, 1; re- 
mains after the final confla- 
gration, 26. 

Europe, belief, of in Middle 
Ages, 1; defeats dualism, 36; 
goes into the enemy's coun- 
try, 37. 

Eucharist, perennial source of 
power and sanctification, 59. 

Faust, quoted, 98, 109. 
Faust-legend, at first proposed 

to employ H. C. Agrippa as 

its chief character, 221. 
Field-rats prosecuted, 78-80. 
Formula against bloody-flux, 

215; against epilepsy, 215. 
Formulary of malediction used 

by priests, 81, 82. 

Gnosticism springs up, 38. 

God, enthroned in the Empy- 
rean, 1; associates with man, 
8-9. 

Gregory IX. exhorts to a cru- 
sade against the Stedinghs, 
174. 

Gregory the Great, mentioned, 
44, 60; forbade the abroga- 
tion of pagan festivities, 160. 

Heaven of crystal, next beneath 
Empyrean, — prlmum mobile ; 
of fixed stars, devoid of 
weight, 2. 

Hell, becomes a place of pun- 
ishment, 11; remains after 
final conflagration, 26. 



228 



INDEX. 



Henricus Cornelius Agrippa ab 
Nettesheim, on God as the 
source of all power, 3, 4; is 
not chosen to represent the 
magician in the Faust-legend, 
221. 

Heretics of Arras, their belief, 
60. 

Hermes Trismegistus, trans- 
muted whatever he chose to 
gold, 115. 

Hincmar, archb. of Eheims, 
propounds a remedy against 
witch-knots, 216. 

Hippocrates, mentioned, 71, 72. 

Historical development of Mid- 
dle-age Cosmic Philosophy, 
28-51. 

History, a spiritual comedy, 23. 

Ilomunculus philosophicus, how 
produced, 132, 133. 

Horst's Demonomagie quoted, 
199. 

Houses of the planets, 134. 

" Hubertus-bands " and "Hu- 
bertus-keys, " 69. 

Images, their miraculous prop- 
erties, 67, 68. 

Incense appropriate for Mars, 
139. 

" Incubi" and " succuhi," 167. 

Inevitable causation, not ad- 
mitted in the Middle Age 
Cosmic philosophy, 4. 

Isis, secrets of entrusted to the 
sons of Ham, 114. 

Jacob's ladder, structure of the 
universe likened to, 6. 



Jamblichus, practices secret 
arts, to outrival Christian 
magi, 40. 

Jean Bodin, ascribes witchcraft 
to Zoroaster, 45. 

John of Salisbury upon witch- 
festivals, 173. 

Judaico-Alexandrian philoso- 
phy blooms, 38. 

Jupiter belonging to the second 
of the planetary spaces, 2. 

Knowledge of highest truths 
revealed to man, 20. 

Lucifer, prince of Seraphim, 9; 
revolts, and wars with Mi- 
chael, 10; is conquered, is 
permitted to tempt man, 10; 
transformed into an angel of 
light, 12; triumphs, 14. 

Luther, on Satanic malice as 
the cause of accidents, 24, 25; 
esteems highly "Deutsche 
Theologie " 26; Tischreden 
quoted, 168; referred to, 199. 

Lycanthropy of the Middle 
Ages, 205-207. 

"Magia Divina," quoted 130- 
133. 

Magic, of the Church, 51-94; 
what enters into all employ- 
ment of it, 53, 54; white and 
black magic, celestial and di- 
abolical, 54; of the Church 
defined, 92.— Magic of the 
Learned, 95-158; is derived 
from various sources, 116; 



INDEX. 



229 



first principle of, 128. — Magic 
of the People, 158-224; black 
magic and devil worship, 164. 

Magician, the learned of the 
15th century, 100; his apart- 
ments described, 105, 108, 
110; explains his science, 112- 
129; performs an incantation, 
129-155. 

Malice of the devil, causes un- 
foreseen accidents, 24, 25. 

Man, a microcosm ; must dwell 
on earth, 7; at first hap- 

py. 8. 

Mandrake, superstitions con- 
cerning, 201. 

Manicheism, new form of dual- 
ism; advances against Eu- 
rope; finds a follower in Au- 
gustine, 43. 

Marathon, Salamis and Plataea 
really battle-fields of a relig- 
ious war, 85. 

Mars, .situate in the third of the 
planetary spaces, 2. 

Matter, devoid of force and all 
quality, 3. 

May-bugs excommunicated, 75. 

Men are often terrified into 
an alliance with the devil, 
25. 

Mercury, path of in planetary 
world, 2. 

Middle Ages, Cosmic Philoso- 
phy of, 1-28; historical origin 
of, 28-55, 94. 

Miracles, defined, 4. 

Mithras mysteries, contain a 
copy, by anticipation, of the 



sacrament of baptism, 57; im- 
itate other mysteries of the 
Church, 58, 60. 

Moon, path of, 2. 

"Mus exerderaius" etc., quoted, 
60. 

Native spirits popularly believed 

to inhabit land, air and water, 

202. 
Nature, knowledge of, same as 

a knowledge of the angels, 5. 
Neoplatonism arises, 40. 
Nine revolving heavens, 1. 
Nork's "Sitten und Gebrauche 

der Deutschen," etc., quoted, 

202. 
Number 72, its significance, 143, 

144; number 488, 147. 

Origen, attempts to unite belief 
and thought, 41, rejects the 
doctrine of eternal punish- 
ment, 43. 

Origin of the names of the days 
of the week, 135, 136. 

Ormuzd and Ahriman, are the 
real adversaries repelled at 
Marathon, 36; author of icJiiie 
magic, 54. 

Pentecost, its gifts transmitted, 
91. 

Peter de Abano, author of an 
important question, 97. 

Perpetuum mobile naturce, meth- 
od of producing, 130, 131. 

Pierre Delancre complains 
against witch-knots, 216. 



230 



INDEX. 



Philosophy, system of possible 
within the Church, 20; adhe- 
rents of the scholastic may 
nse Aristotle's dialectics, 21. 
Planetary world, next beneath 
that of fixed stars, 2; consist- 
ing of seven heavens, 2. 

Planets guided by angels, 3; 
influence the elements and 
man, 134, 135. 

Plotinus, tries to restore Neo- 
platinism, 40. 

Pope, feudal lord of emperors, 
18 ; determines the true induc- 
tions of philosophy, 21; Ser- 
gius III., 63; Urban Vitus, 
65. 

Pope John XXII., complains 
that his life is endangered by 
sorcerers, 177. 

Pope Innocent VIII., puts forth 
a bull against the spread of 
sorcery, 178. 

Popular maxims of superstition, 
208-211. 

Power, from a spiritual source 
only, 3; communicated to the 
heavens and the earth by an- 
gels, 3. 

Power, order of angels, guide 
the stars and planets, 5. 

Principalities, Archangels, and 
Angels, the third and lowest 
hierarchy, hold supremacy 
over terrestrial things, 5, 6. 

Principalities, part of the low- 
est hierarchy of angels, guar- 
dian spirits of nations, 6. 

Proclus, lastNeoplatonician, 44. 



Pythagoras, glorified as fit to 
rank with Christ in miracu- 
lous gifts, 40; believed the 
universe founded on num- 
bers, 124. 

Rain-processions in the Middle 

Ages, 74. 
Reason, darkened by apostacy, 

13. 
" Recognitiones divi dementis 

ad Jacob.," quoted, 165. 
Reformation, retains somewhat 

of the Church-magic, 92. 
Relics, their magical use, 66. 
Remigius, ascribes witchcraft 

to Zoroaster, 45. 
Renaissance, overthrew the 

darkness and superstition of 

the Middle Ages, 222-223. 

Saints, intercession of, more ef- 
fective than that of Seraphim, 
17; not disturbed by misery 
of the damned, 27; have con- 
trol over various diseases. 69. 

Satan, the Judaized Ahriman. 
35. 

Saturn, belonging to the first 
of the planetary spaces, 2. 

Scale of the Holy Tetrad (Ta- 
ble I.), 123. 

Schemhamphoras, or God's mys- 
tical names, 144, 146. 

Scholastici erranles, 220. 

Science the, of the Greeks is 
rational, originates logic and 
geometry; of the Middle Ages 
is magic, 30. 



INDEX. 



231 



Scotus Erigena, mentioned, 44. 

Seraphim Cherubim and 
Thrones, the first hierar- 
chy, and nearest God, 5. 

Simon Magus, legend of his 
discomfiture by St. Peter, 165. 

Sprenger, author of Malleus 
Malificarum, ascribes the or- 
igin of witchcraft to Zoroas- 
ter, 45. 

Stedinghs persecuted, 174. 

tiumma Theologica, quoted on 
the delectation of the re- 
deemed upon seeing the mis- 
ery of the damned, 28. 

Sun, belonging to the middle 
space of planetary world, 2. 

Superstitious prognostics of dis- 
ease and death, 212-216. 

Synodal decree of Ancyra, 171. 

Table of correspondences be- 
tween microcosmos and things 
on earth, and the planets, 127. 

Tekfael, name of the demon 
summoned, 147, 153. 

Terrestrial things, images of the 
celestial, 6; are composed of 
the coarsest matter, 6 ; are all 
under the control of special 
angels, 7; are also influenced 
by stars, planets and arche- 
types, 7. 

Theologie der Thatsachen wider 
die Theologie der Ehetorik 
(A. F. C. H. Vilmar, 1857) 
quoted, 48-50. 



Thomas Aquinas, on the acqui- 
escence of the saints in the 
punishment of the lost, 28; 
on the power of demons, 73. 

Universe, a vast lyre, 7; an un- 
broken harmony, 9; divided 
between Good and Evil, 11. 

University of 15th century de- 
scribed, 96-98. 

Vampirism, 207. 

Venus, path of in planetary 
world, 2. 

Vilmar, Neo-Lutkeran, would 
restore to the clergy their 
mediaeval prerogatives, 48-50. 

Virgil quoted, 205, 216. 

Von Gorres, attempts to re- 
store the belief in vampirism, 
207. 

Witch-hammer, contains direc- 
tions for the judge in witch- 
trials, 90; 178-195. 

Witches' Sabbath, supposed or- 
igin of, 170. 

Witch-knots, 216. 

Zoroaster, the reputed founder 
of magic science ; and by some 
believed the author of witch- 
craft, 45; his religion allows 
evil to disappear in course of 
time, and promises a final 
restoration of all things, 46. 

Zoroaster and Plato's systems 
blended, 37. 






















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